NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I may have written the first rare bird - footballing joke. I was so pleased with it that I tweeted the thing and now I am recycling it as a blog post. Here it is... BOOM! Ivory Gull seen on the pitch at White Hart Lane feeding on the corpse of Tottenham Hotspur. Now, for those of you that know nothing about birding and football (or only a bit about one of those subjects), I'd better explain the construction of the said joke. BOOM! - used ironically to lampoon a small section of the birding glitterati to announce the finds of rare birds. IVORY GULL - a topical rarity, as a few have been seen in Scotland, NE England and now Yorkshire. WHITE HART LANE - home ground of Tottenham Hotspur (my team) CORPSE - Ivory Gulls are well known for scavenging on the corpses of cetaceans washed up on beaches TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR - have just been beaten by Liverpool 5-0 at White Hart Lane If there are any budding stand-up comics out there, you can have this one free of charge.

My butterfly list for White Hart Lane, home to Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, leapt up to 2 species this afternoon, with a Large White fluttering above the pitch 45 minutes before the kick-off against Everton. This joins the Brimstone that I saw last April (before the Swansea City match). You can carry on looking for the natural history wherever you happen to be...

At the annual North Downs and beyond outing to White Hart Lane (where we watched the mighty Spurs overcome a skillful Swansea City), the natural history radar was still switched on. I can now add Grey Wagtail and Brimstone butterfly to the Tottenham Hotspur football ground list. On the same day, back at Beddington Sewage Farm, the latest evolution of the ringing group was being unveiled. My early bird ringing training was under Ken Parsley and Mike Netherwood during the mid-1970s in the latter days of the then BSF ringing group. After Ken stopped ringing, Mike (and Mickey Cook) set up a ringing station within the storm tanks, where they practiced their art for close on thirty years. Now this scientific study has come back out onto the sewage farm proper, net rides have been cleared and a number of group members are training under Mike's watchful eye. Good luck to the relaunched group! Mike very kindly reminded me of some other bizarre bird lists I used to keep as a (strange) t...

This morning I went to Holmethorpe Sand Pits, confident that I would add my name to the ever growing list of observers who have found a Wryneck, Lapland Bunting or Glossy Ibis in the UK over the past few days. After being on site for ten minutes I felt as if I had been put into a trance and then awoken in the middle of the wildfowl collection at Arundel. The first pit I looked at contained a Ruddy Duck, 5 Red-crested Pochards and 6 Egyptian Geese. I even digiscoped one (see above). Those of you that were regular visitors to the original North Downs and beyond blog may remember that I got on with digiscoping about as well as a vampire gets on with cloves of garlic. My morning was not without incident, but not incident enough to regale you with. It was all rather average. This afternoon I went off along the North Downs proper, camera in hand ready to capture marvellous images of the fungi I expected to find. In truth, what I did find were specimens in poor shape that did not want or nee...