George Bristow's Secret Freezer

My adventures in the (drum roll)... World of Birds! Clash! As nobody has been asking, I'll explain. George Bristow was a taxidermist at the hub of the Hastings Rarities scandal. From 1896 to 1939, hundreds of rare birds passed through his shop in St Leonards-on-Sea which he claimed were locally killed. They were later shown to be fraudulent. I'd like to think that at the back of his shop was a time machine linked to a freezer in another dimension, full of dead birds. You read it here first.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

And the lesson for today is...

... don't f*** with Russia.

So I didn't. An hour's seawatch before work, 06:00-07:00 in a reasonable northerly 4, wasn't heaving. 7 Great Skuas (5N 2S) were decent, also a jumping fish! Things were a bit slow. But there was a small passage of Eurasian Teal going north (15 in total), also 86(!) Northern Gannets north, 7 sooth, 1 Red-throated Diver south, 2 Annoying Small Waders north, and another 2 that would have been annoying small waders except they were Ruddy Turnstones, so not annoying. but easy. Also a Dipper on the shore.

Anyway, I have to go. Apparently this birdwatching thing was all a sham. According to me little spaceman friend, I'm really the chairman-dictator of a small Marxist Central American country (don't look for it on the map, the CIA removed it from all the maps), and it's time for me to go home. My people need me.

If you see someone like me at the British Birdwatching Fair, it is but a shade of a shadow of a memory.