Ever since, this bird has been causing a stir in twitching heartland, and twitchers have been causing a stir in the national press. Many people have since visited Steve’s cosy home, stood in stocking feet on the warm tiles in the back room, looking through the French windows at the bird’s singular beauty, while Steve made cuppas on his Aga and totted up the money he was making for BirdLife by way of the £5 entrance fee. And to top it all off, each visitor got to add a new bird to his/her British list. The whole thing sounded like so much fun, I had to pay a visit.
So, one Saturday, I took what I like to call a Don Draper day (you’ll know what I mean if you watch Mad Men). Except I didn’t slink off to spend time with my boho mistress or watch some arthouse movie. I went twitching in Oxfordshire.
It’s a bit of trek from West Yorkshire to Middle England, so I got through a fair few CDs, opting for a couple of easy straighteners to help me along the pre-dawn motorway (Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath and The Pixies’ Surfer Rosa). I then tried another listen of Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest. Well, it starts off promisingly enough, with a superb Slowdive-like epic, and takes some interesting turns with sparse solo tracks, great lyrics, and simple guitar-pop (Memory Boy is ace); but ultimately it’s a patchy record. But “patchy” is a lot better than “boring”, which was my thought when I caught them live in 2009…
Felt Mountain by Goldfrapp was the accompaniment to the journey trough the grey pastoralism of the Cotwolds. This record is always a joy to hear, and is surely one of the best records released this century. I mean, how great is Deer Stop?! It’s almost the perfect song, except it doesn’t include a guitar solo, so I’m not sure it qualifies...
Chipping Norton town centre was busy with local people, as you’d expect at 08:30, and so was The Leys, although mostly with birders (plus a wary bloke washing his car and a bemused Tesco delivery guy). I briefly joined a group of purposeful-looking birders stood staring at a fence, before our man Steve beckoned us silently from further up the road, and I was soon stood sweating next to the Aga in the now famous kitchen.
The bird had flown as we filed in, and most people left immediately to go chasing it around the side streets and back gardens. A few of us more patient types waited, sharing tea and conversation with our host, while watching the Bullfinches (seven at once!) and Brambling, among the commoner finches in the garden. The dove teased us for a while, sitting in a tree in next door’s garden. I could just make out the dark grey-black of the tail among the ash keys.
Soon the dove from above came down from its resting place and perched unsteadily on a fence. Lots of cooing from in the kitchen. Then it settled on a stone plinth close to the windows for all to see. Lots of commandments to “keep still!” from the home-owner, and clicking of DSLRs, something like this:
And what a beautiful bird it was – particularly the pristine black-and-white neck lines and those dark, dark wing coverts with their rusty orange fringes. A truly exotic Turtle Dove in Britain, as if the “usual” ones weren’t exotic enough. Well worth the trip.
Now then, while I’d had my feet up at number 41, the news came through the infamous Slat-backed Gull had been seen again that morning on the River Thames. That news, added to a report from previous day, made me decide to go for the gull again. So I jumped in the car and grabbed the nearest CD, which happened to be Granddaddy’s classic The Software Slump, and I was off.
There’s always been something slightly “ELO” about Graddaddy. Maybe it’s because, like Jeff Lynne, Jason Lytle writes songs about things like robots and the weather, as much as about love and death. And like best of Jeff’s often-pompous output, Jason somehow manages to combine cheesy synths with old school song writing and instrumentation. There’s just a vague similarity to both bands that I can’t put my finger on... I dunno, maybe it’s just that their initials are the same.
As I drove, I remembered hearing that it was quite easy to see Red Kite over the M40, and during the course of just two Granddaddy songs I saw an impressive 31 Red Kite over the car and a pair of Common Buzzard. There were certainly more, but I really needed to keep my eyes on the road.
Two hours later, I’m stood staring at the landfill beyond Rainham Marshes. Again. Here's some film, to give you an idea of the scene...
I learnt a lot about gulls in the 2.5 hours I stood there (even picking out a Yellow-legged Gull among the blizzard of gull wings). I also learnt a lot about myself. I don’t think I’ll twitch a rare gull at a tip again, unless it’s nailed on. I mean it: actually nailed on to something. I can’t face many more dips like this. My mood wasn’t helped by suggestions later that the previous days’ sightings were a bit dubious. I’ve no reason to doubt the claims, but if I’d considered the lack of recent convincing photos of the gull, I probably wouldn’t have attempted the twitch. You live and learn.
So, home via the traffic jam known as South Mims on the M25. At least it gave me time to give Radiohead’s new album The King of Limbs a listen or three. I’ll freely admit that I’ve long been indifferent to Radiohead (apart from their first two albums, which I simply don’t like), although they have been pressing all the right buttons and ticking all the right boxes for years. I just haven’t been able to get excited by them. But this album, with its unobtrusive, half-formed ideas and abstract demos that sound like sketches, is actually brilliant. The vocals are bare yet impenetrable, and the brass is both subtle and bold. Despite my previous misgivings about the band, I’ve always rated Radiohead’s rhythm section, and this record belongs to them: simple and complicated. My ears will be open from now. You live and learn…
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