EDIT:
I've kept this post on ice for 36 hours or so, wondering if it weren't best to just delete the thing.
Then I reckoned, ah whisky tango hotel...
[You may want to just hit the little button marked X...]
Lurgy is a terrible thing.
It forces you to become far too responsible, so you go to work but you don't go out birding. Necessary shopping, yes. Necessary seawatching, no.
Bah and indeed humbug.
I know shuffling about the nearer bits of the Patch is technically birding, [as is watching the Coal Tits sort through the new mix thing* I've put in one of the feeders], but it's not quite the same as lugging a scope about the place, getting soggy and cramped, let alone actually looking for and finding something. You could probably make some conclusions about the old hunting instincts here, and you wouldn't be alone.
So, what's he doing posting?
That most dreaded of things, thinking.
There are so many non-'what I saw today' posts that go through my head. The vast majority keep right on trucking straight out the other ear, and the rest tend to be edited for brevity or sanity. So only the odd paragraph makes it through here and there.
Even now, as I'm sat here actually writing a post about this stuff, I'm wondering what I ought to put in..
It's not easy.
Something that keeps coming back to me is the nature of sight. The trouble is that I can't find a way to convey my feelings on this mix of biology and philosophy in a way that conveys all I want to put over, while being in at least some way legible.
There is a line in a Lovecraft story; "Do you know that Life is Illusion?" which I often come back to as neatly summing it up. But unless your mind looks sideways at classic horror and modern biology**, you may not appreciate it.
It would be lovely if I had the skill to post a neat essay on this, as it's very relevant to birding. After all, once you know the truth, how can you trust your eyes?
Photograph everything? But as has been shown, whoever said 'the camera never lies' was a liar.
Perhaps we should accept that there are things we can't change and just [sorry] keep calm and carry on. Or as has been put more concisely [and as I'm going quote-happy] Don't Panic.
Maybe even accept [Heresy warning!] that birding is not science and stop trying to pretend that it is.
Ah, but this is another topic.
I'm going to steer away from this potential rant [and several others looming] to go completely off topic and completely on topic at the same time. How so? Well, this is a blog mostly about birds, but it is still a blog, and thus primarily an exercise in getting nonsense out of my head and into yours.***
So, dear readers, I must share something with you.. Just saw my first referendum poster! Right out that there window. Talk about moving quickly.
Yes yes, I have an unofficial 'no politics' rule.
No no, I'm not going any further on the subject - just impressed at the reaction time.
Right then...
Rather than go on about anything else, I'm going to make a confession [more good standard blog material, then]. I have been resorting to photographing flowers. [[Oh stop laughing, KW!]]
I've been trying to remember when all of these have been out at the same time [and not just in sheltered and tended gardens, either].
Cue pics:
And you remember the fakebells. Well, aparently there are real ones on Patch too.
Also primroses and all the kinds of daffydowndillies going. Plus Daisies and buttercups and dandelions and many more I can't name..
I fear that soon small childyrens will know snow only as CGI...
[Isn't that cheery?]
Ah, the Wheel turns, what will tomorrow bring?
I've really got to get out more.
Be Seeing You...
[[*RSPB's interesting mix of sunflower hearts, mealworms, and suet nibbley things - it was on offer.]]
[[**Briefly; a main theme in his stories was that the world as we perceive it is not true reality. Turns out a lot of what we see is not what's there, but what our brains think is likely to be there.]]
[[***Or at least, what you think is in my head... ]]
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