The end of a white-throated needletail

Today it’s time for guest blogger Rambler5319 to take over again. Enjoy!

 

What, I hear you say, is a white-throated needletail? Never heard of it? Well if you hadn’t up till last week and you live in the UK you certainly will know about it now. It’s a bird. The paper I bought had an article about one; curious I thought – how come? Well because it died. However it’s the manner of its death which caught the nation’s interest. Surprisingly, here in the UK, the papers took on an almost “Chat” type of presentation. It was possible to read the story in The Guardian, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail, The Independent, The Spectator, The BBC News Channel & innumerable blogs and various bird appreciation forums & websites (NPR, The Scottish Sun, The Scotsman, Rare Bird Alert UK, International Business Times) to name but a few. Amazing. What had happened to merit such blanket coverage? Well, this particular bird had flown into a wind turbine blade and killed itself. What you might not know is that the bird in question is quite rare in the UK as it generally lives in the Far Eastern/Australasian area. The Australians apparently call it the Stormbird because it is often seen during stormy weather and bushfires.

Now it’s the rarity value that got certain people interested: since 1950 only 5 recorded sightings of this particular type of bird and only 8 or 9 in the last 170 years! In fact there hadn’t been a sighting over here since 1991. About 200 birdwatchers (some sources say 20, some 40, some 80 etc – I’m not kidding) from all over the UK had travelled north to the Island of Harris off the NW coast of Scotland. (Apparently if you’re a native of the island, though it’s not actually an island in its own right, you’re called a Hearach; as of 2001 Census there were less than 2,000 residents. You may of course recognise the Harris bit of the name being that of a world famous cloth produced there: Harris Tweed.) However, back to our bird; somehow it seems to have either got lost or been blown off track because it shouldn’t have been anywhere near the UK.

I thought a few pertinent facts here might dispel some of the near hysteria about the event. Let’s be quite clear, it was one bird! The Australian Government is quoted as saying that although worldwide numbers of the species are not known it is not considered to be threatened.

It can reach speeds of up to 106mph in flight and, so my paper told me, “copulation takes place in mid-air at high speed!” Report headlines varied from an “accident” to “killed by a wind turbine” to the somewhat OTT Men’s Daily News which led with “rare bird slaughtered by a turbine”. Nothing like a bit of hyperbole to get the readers flocking, eh?

Some called it “the bird of the century”. One group of four friends had driven for 17 hours to get to the spot. Obviously this was a big event in the bird watching world. So up they went; set up their cameras & video recorders; got their binoculars out and waited. And then all of a sudden there it was – the white-throated needletail. In it came, flying across the sea heading for the island. Cameras clicked, videos recorded, twitchers watched with great anticipation hoping to see it for a while flying around. However for some reason the bird didn’t see the 120ft (36.6 metre) high wind turbine and flew straight into it – BOOM, down it went. Bird watchers raced across to the turbine hoping to help it up after it knocked itself out. But NO, there it was, lying on the ground, just dead. And that was it. Don’t ask me how it didn’t see a wind turbine when, in its natural habitat, it allegedly flies around in bad weather and around bushfires. I can’t explain why, but it didn’t. The death was pounced on by the anti wind farm lobby and there was even talk of a serious threat to the species. Remember it was one bird and from a species which the Australians do not believe is threatened at all but hey who wants the facts?

Maybe it was what is called a “slow news day” here in the UK. (This is when not much reportable news is available on the recent main topics so the various papers and agencies grab whatever miscellaneous bits of things happening that they can.)

F is for….

FLIGHT

I had a bit of a random dream last night and since you guys are pretty good at working them out, I thought I’d share it with you. It was obviously influenced by the fact that I watched that film, Flight, last night.

I seemed to be on some type of trekking journey somewhere, I think to find the plane. There were four of us, a woman, a man and a boy, about twelve years old, I think.

Two of us got into one of those small two seater paragliders and the others got into a bigger one with ten other people already on it. I had my phone and was filming the take off. We circled past the other plane then came out across an open delta area, all vivid blues and greens that, when I think about it now, reminds me of aerial photos I’ve seen of the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

We swooped lower and there was a big deep bit of water, like a huge lake. All four of us jumped in from our planes and started swimming to the edge. It took quite a while.

When we got out, we were on a busy shopping street in a town and we made our way to a cafe and then upstairs to a room above it. We were watching the videos I took on my phone of the first minute or so of the flight when the boy and the woman started to get really ill and shivery. I was hugging the boy and trying to warm him up and talking about how the water in the lake must have made them ill.

Then I woke up.

A dream I had last night

I had a strangely long and obscure dream last night. It went like this.

My friends, Sophie and Jay, and I were in Australia. We were travelling and having an adventure type of holiday. I remember us going to a shopping arcade place which had those cloth bag things which are brightly coloured and part of the general attire of people who have recently returned from a gap year. At one end was really expensive stuff so we never went to that end.

Suddenly it was our last day and we had to get our flight home at 2.15pm. It was only a few hours off and I started to panic. Sophie and Jay didn’t seem too worried and next minute, we were doing that thing I’ve seen on TV, where you have suction pads on your hands and feet and you climb up the side of glass buildings. I had the hand bits and was climbing up and when I got to the top, Sophie and Jay were already there somehow.

When I started looking for the suction things to climb back down I couldn’t find the feet bits and I started to panic again because I thought we’d miss the flight. I really didn’t want to miss it because if we had to buy tickets to get the next flight it would cost at least £70 (!).

Somehow we were back down the side of the building and it was 1.15pm and we rushed back to the hostel where we were staying and asked the people at the desk there if it would be faster to go by train or taxi. They said taxi so I ran to the room to get my backpack. The other two already had theirs with them even though they hadn’t gone to get them. Such is the way of dreams ….

When I came back to the reception, Sophie and Jay weren’t there. They had gone for lunch somewhere. I panicked. I saw their bags but there was only an hour til the flight. I didn’t have time to wait for them! I ran outside, flagged down a passing taxi and jumped in.

I got to the airport with ten minutes to spare, yelling at them to hold the plane. I checked in and started to run to the gate but it was really just one big room with one gate. So I just stood there and one side of the building was glass so I saw a small plane come in and land on a grassy area right next to the building. The other passengers and I marvelled at its smallness. There were only about twelve seats.

We walked out to get onto the plane but suddenly there was a swampy bit we had to cross so we got wet up to our knees. I also realised that in my rush I had forgotten to check my bag in so hoped no-one would notice it.

As I got on and sat down and strapped, Soph and Jay were there too and Jay was pregnant. She had been pregnant the whole time, I think, but I had been unaware of it for some reason. And Sophie was saying to me, “I can’t believe you left us,” and I was going, “Well, I looked for you all over. If you two were going to be stranded in Australia, there was no point me being stranded there too, just for the sake of it.”

They seemed especially annoyed that I had left them with Jay being pregnant.

We were just strapping ourselves in and having this discussion when my alarm beeped and when I opened my eyes, I was genuinely surprised that I wasn’t on a plane.

Strange.

Analyse that, psychologists.

The Plan

Ssshhh! Don’t say a word. I’m too excited to not tell you all but you mustn’t tell, ok?

I am going to work now. Until 9.30am, when I will call Danda and ask him if he wants to come for breakfast at the deli. Fingers crossed, Danda will say yes.

When he gets there, we will sit down for breakfast and I will say, ‘Oo! Something came from Amazon for you.’

He will say, ‘Really? But I didn’t order anything.’

I will say, ‘Well, here it is. I guess just open it and see what it is.’

I will get him a box which I received something from Amazon in the other day. I am very sneaky. I have taken out the book that I was sent but kept the packaging neat. I have then put a different book in there then glued it all back together so it looks like it hasn’t been opened.

So he will open it. Inside is a book with a gold cover which says ‘ROME’ in big letters across the front.

He will be confused.

‘I didn’t order this,’ he will say.

‘Are you sure,’ I will say. ‘Check inside the front cover, there should be an invoice somewhere, it will tell you who’s sent it to you. Maybe someone sent it as a present or something?’

He will flip open the front cover and inside is a message from me, which says, ‘Flight at 5pm. Pack your bags!’

He will be shocked and surprised and excited…. Hopefully. There will then be a flurry of bag packing and disbelief.

And then off we will go to Rome for four days!

Fingers crossed that:

a) all goes to plan
b) my phone works in Rome
c) my battery can cope with the photograph-taking overload

And remember, no telling!

I’ll let you know tomorrow if it went smoothly.

Books that remind me of stuff

One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Reminds me of being in Laos, in a town called Vang Vieng, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I hired a bike for the day and rode out into the fields by myself and found this abandoned bamboo hut up on stilts. I climbed into it and sat down and read the last few chapters of One Hundred Years Of Solitude while listening to a cricket on the roof and the sounds of nature. It was lovely.

Lord Of The Rings
The first one. I don’t remember what it’s called. I started reading it right before I flew back to Namibia. I’d lived there for a year on my gap year and was going back 10 months later to work for some friends. I was reading it on the flight and did quite a few changes so I read that book in Scotland, England, Holland, South Africa and Namibia. I loved that it had taken such a journey with me.

Paulo Coelho, I’ve forgotten what it was called
I read this in an airport somewhere. I think on the way to Morocco. My friend and I did a lot of travelling together over the space of two years and on this flight we had a stopover in Spain, I think. I had bought this book in the airport in London. In the airport in Spain, my friend slept and I was knackered but trying to stay awake and I just tore through this book. I had finished reading it in a few hours.

Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami
I read this while travelling through the Philippines with the same friend. We stayed in this little B&B on an island called Bohol. We’d found it because a lady on the boat there had started chatting to us when we were singing Whitney to pass the time. She told us to stay there and it was such a good find. No-one else was staying there so we pretended it was our own house! We stayed up late playing card games and reading. I loved this book! I finished it and left it there for the next guests.

Hamlet
I had been reading Shakespeare in school and not really liking or disliking it. I just didn’t understand it mostly. Something clicked at some point and I wanted to read more of it. I went to the English cupboard at school and borrowed a copy of Hamlet and loved it. I just got it. I remember feeling really excited because I knew there was a whole stack of Shakespeare out there for me to discover.

Leon: Ingredients and Recipes
I was a few months post-op last year and had finally got over my fear of eating (I was terrified in case eating caused the same problem and I had to go back to hospital and by this point I was pretty scared of hospital). I was eating more and was strong enough to stand up for the time it took to cook dinner. I found this book and loved the first section, about ingredients. If any of you are into food, this book is amazingly fascinating. I went on holiday to Portugal and was still quite delicate, so instead of jumping in and out of the water and running about, I sat reading this book in the sun. It was lovely.

Famous Five
Reminds me of my childhood in general and how much I wanted to be George.

The Janice Project
This was the first romance novel I read that formulated my idea of what my potential life partner should be like!

Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeta Naslund
I read this book in Namibia while I was training for a trek across the Great Wall of China. I used to go on the stair machine for an hour every morning to prepare. My body was fine with it but my mind was bored. A friend lent me this book to keep me entertained and it worked. A few years later I kept thinking about it but couldn’t remember the name. I was in an out of the way town in Texas, waiting for a bus, when I saw a little book shop in the distance. I thought I’d kill some time there and found a few books I wanted. I went to the till to pay and right there, next to the till was this same book! Same cover. I recognised it immediately and got it. It was just as good, if not better, the second time around. I’ve been daydreaming about visiting Nantucket since I read it.

The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
I might have got his name wrong. Found this in Laos, in Luang Prabang. Opposite our hotel there was a little cafe/bookshop. It was the first I’d seen in Asia so I was pretty excited. We sat drinking exotic teas and absorbing the book joy. I found this tucked away on a shelf and loved the cover. It’s a woman’s diary of moving to Japan just after the war. I can’t emphasise how good this book is. If I could only read a few more books ever again, this would be one I’d choose. Read it.