The Ten Commandments

You shall have no other Gods but me.
In other words, leave plants, bugs and such stuff alone, you won't be able to take it all in and as such you will become an even worse birder

You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.
Lee Evans, Bill Oddie, that bald bloke on the One Show - do not weaken to the lure of the celebrity however much it seems to be a good idea at the time. They will, one day, fall. Fame is a fickle thing

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
Don't say that you knew Peter Grant when you didn't

You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
So, put away your optics on this day and do things like normal people do

Respect your father and mother.
Don't keep nicking their car and money and remember that goodwill is a two-way thing - David...

You must not kill.
If they are older than you the chances are that you will, at sometime later, overhaul their lists when they die naturally, so bumping them off will just run the risk of future imprisonment. And you won't see much from a prison cell, will you?

You must not commit adultery.
Stick to your own patch, don't rush off to Staines Reservoir as soon as something good turns up

You must not steal.
Don't pretend that you found the goodie in the first place

You must not give false evidence against your neighbour.
As tempting as it is to spread rumour of a rival birder's propensity to string, does he really? Or does he just find more birds than you?

You must not be envious of your neighbour's goods. You shall not be envious of his house nor his wife, nor anything that belongs to your neighbour.
This could apply to his list, optics, books or the fact that he had the good sense to marry someone that doesn't give a damn about the number of days that he goes missing in the field or that he lives at Dungeness.

Comments

Factor said…
Very good. Particularly 5 and 7, which sounds like me I think (apart from the fact I have been there twice this week and seen not a lot)!
10 May 2013 at 22:20
Steve Gale said…
Number 7 does seem a good fit for you Neil now that you mention it!
11 May 2013 at 09:34
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more