NDB in 'twitching' shock!

Reports have been coming out of Surrey that North Downs and beyond proprietor, Steve Gale, was seen this morning at Coldharbour trying to twitch the Two-barred Crossbill.

Stunned birders were either not sure who he was, or had a vague recollection of a younger version "being around a few years ago". Paul Sell, who was present for some of Gale's visit, said "he had binoculars AND a telescope. He looked like a birder, but I could see that he was a little confused and wasn't sure what to do". The Professor from Beddington added "I always thought that he was a shifty individual whenever I saw him at the sewage farm, but this morning took the biscuit - he was looking double shifty"

NT warden for Leith Hill, Sam Bayley, confirmed, "Yes, it was definitely him. I met him at Dungeness last summer and couldn't forget someone who looked so uncannily like George Clooney. However, this morning was sad as it was obvious that he has let himself go. It is no coincidence that after three consecutive days of plenty of crossbills being seen, including the Two-barred, this morning was one big no show. The guy clearly has no field skills".

Apparently Gale left after three and a half hours of searching, having seen up to 600 Redwings, a Brambling and 2 Crossbills. He was, apparently, fairly sociable, which has led some experts into questioning whether it was really him at all.

STOP PRESS: Twitter reports an exchange of tweets between Northumberland moth-fondler Stewart Sexton and Gale. In them, Sexton accused Gale of twitching, to which the latter replied that, as Two-barred Crossbill wouldn't have been a lifer, it wasn't strictly a twitch. Lee Evan's has been called in to adjudicate.

Comments

Jerry said…
Sadly I too have had way too few Gale sightings in recent years - a couple in the open at Dungeness and some locally (including a memorable glimpse of one well camouflaged and skulking through Holmethorpe car park after dodging the police ridiculously early one morning - apparently gave some pretext of searching for a Tawny (Pipit? no Owl!!).
11 October 2013 at 23:47
Stewart said…
Probably wasn't him at all, people these days couldn't id a Robin on a Christmas card...
12 October 2013 at 12:40
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