Scrapes Wot Us 'Orns Have Got Ourselves Into

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by KelsoOrn, Mar 29, 2018.

  1. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    They do all have beaks and feathers but look at the beak on a shoebill or rhinoceros hornbill....and the feathers on a resplendent quetzal... (not my photos !)

    [​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]
     
  2. PhilippineOrn

    PhilippineOrn First Team

    I agree and not at all unimpressive....

    but look at a horse with an erection, I for one know where my eyes are gazing

    [​IMG]
     
  3. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Is it wearing a condom ? If so very presumptious but also highly responsible.
    I took loads of great photos of proboscis monkeys in Borneo but most are ruined by highly erect todgers. I guess if you're at risk of becoming extinct, you should only go down fighting. Forever armed.
     
  4. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Good question. I'll p.m. you later. Haven't we done something like this before?
     
  5. PhilippineOrn

    PhilippineOrn First Team

    umm what year exactly in Borneo and did one of those 'monkeys' happen to be wearing a Phones4u Watford shirt? If so, how much?
     
  6. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Glad to see the direction this thread has taken in my brief absence. My favourite bird is the Hoopoe. Unsurprisingly there's a story around that choice.
     
  7. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Debated Hoopoe. Definitely favourite European bird.
     
  8. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Nosebag?
     
  9. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Never had a PM in 4 years of membership. Probably a good thing. No sexual preferences please :)
     
  10. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Three excellent choices. Never seen a Shoebill THAT well!
     
  11. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    I'd have thought that most photos are considerably enhanced by a 'highly erect todger'. Isn't an entire industry based on that?
     
  12. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Got very close views at Murchison in Uganda. Best photo i got was this one
    Everyone else....talk amongst yourselves....
    upload_2018-4-12_16-19-17.png
     
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  13. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Superb. Seen them at a similar range at another park in Uganda nearer Kampala whose name currently escapes me. But with a papyrus background as opposed to amongst water hyacinths.
     
  14. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Can you put up a pic. of a Hoopoe Tut.? Preferably 'erect'. I'm useless at that sort of stuff.
     
  15. PhilippineOrn

    PhilippineOrn First Team

    Are those water hyacinths? I didn't know. Magnificent all the same
     
  16. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Photo I took in Lesvos plus someone else's erect one !
    upload_2018-4-12_16-50-22.png [​IMG]
     
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  17. tonycotonstache

    tonycotonstache Squad Player

    Is she ok with you telling us that?
     
  18. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    No idea.
     
  19. domthehornet

    domthehornet Moderator Staff Member

    Is this a grandad version of Simms at Uni?
     
  20. Cthulhu

    Cthulhu Keyboard Warrior Staff Member

    I’m imagining more a Simon Quinlank type
     
  21. Cthulhu

    Cthulhu Keyboard Warrior Staff Member

    He is the king of hobbies
     
  22. another_mrlizard

    another_mrlizard Squad Player

  23. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Blue-footed Boobies. Pacific coast S.Am. Regular sized ones.
     
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  24. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Right then. This birding malarkey. Anoraks and weak tea drinkers? P.ss off. Not my band of brothers from the 70's. Thanks for the photos Tut.

    Tut has posted two photos of a Hoopoe. Pretty exotic eh? Range a bit of sub-saharan Africa (now a separate species - African Hoopoe - an aside) Africa north of the Sahara, the middle east and Mediterranean Europe. But a few 'overshoot' each year and reach these shores mostly on the south coast in the spring. So here's my 'Hoopoe story'.

    It's the 30th April 1963. (55th anniversary coming up when we play the Spuds at a Wembley). I've just started 'birding' due to my dad having lent me his wartime binoculars to look at the stars at night with (a first interest and still a peripheral one) and then finding something to look at with them in the daytime too. Still with the graticules (cross-hairs) in. Absolute sh.te compared with anything on offer these days but who cares.

    So I kick off in the winter of 62/63 down at the cress beds adjacent to Cassiobury Park. I was nine at the time. Snipe, Meadow Pipit and Water Rail. Fairly bog-standard fare although the latter is a bit of a 'skulker' (difficult to see).

    Then in the spring I get a 'dose of the mumps' and go to convalesce with my granny in Saltdean just east of Brighton. And on the first day there (30 April 1963 - still nine) I take a stroll down to the local bit of scrubby woodland with a school playing field adjacent. And as soon as I get there this thing like an effing great moth flies over my head and onto the playing field. So I peek out from behind the nearest bramble bush and it's an effing Hoopoe parading about (they love a bit of short turf). As in an effing Hoopoe. AN EFFING HOOPOE.

    To put this observation in perspective the only i.d. book I had back then was called the Observer's Book of Birds. A thing about the size of an i-phone albeit a bit thicker. There were Observer's books for all sorts of stuff. Other biodiversity obviously (butterflies and plants etc.) but loads of other stuff too. Like architecture, churches and astronomy. I've still got virtually a full set in a lock-up in Whippendell Road.

    But the Observer's Book of Birds only had colour and b&w plates on alternate pages. So in their infinite wisdom (stupidity) the editors of that book had decided to put the most exotic bird in the book, a pink thing with black and white stripes all down its back and an erectile crest in the b&w section. W.nkers.

    Anyway, I knew what it was (the most exotic thing I knew existed as a 9 y.o.) and so obviously a seminal moment for me. Often described as a RED LETTER DAY back then. On the same day I saw my first Redstart (good), Cuckoo (quite good), and Kestrel and Goldcrest (more bog-standard).

    I've never regretted 'getting hooked'. It's taken me all around the world as a hobby/calling/job. It's been a constant in my life whatever else I've happened to be doing. Like WFC. I've travelled to tourist destinations but beyond the tourist bits and to non-tourist destinations and gone beyond whatever the bits are that the few non-tourist pioneers are getting to as well.

    And I've put the phone down on a government minister in Edinburgh because a Green Woodpecker flew across the office and played 'hard to get' on a North Sea oil-rig because it was a 'good night for migrants'. And I can walk down to Ricky High St. from this flat (500m) and know whether thats a Robin, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Wren, Chaffinch, Dunnock singing from that tree bush and be in a totally different zone to all all those around me.

    As Simon Barnes, sports and eco-writer for the Times etc. has suggested 'it's a state of mind'. I agree. And with around 10.5k of species of birds currently recognised in the world that's a good number to get to grips with and try to see a goodly number of if you put yourself about a bit. Currently I've seen about half of them and am working on it. And I f.cking well love it.
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2018
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  25. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    It looks really pissed off with you
     
  26. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    They always look pissed off, it's nothing personal. I have a big camera so wasn't that close. It was more pissed off with the local fisherman who chase them away and sometimes kill them as they see them as competition. That's despite it being in a protected national park. We had to stop some young boys rowing around chasing it from vegetation to vegetation. God knows how they breed there. Very depressing. There won't be any left there soon.
     
  27. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Seen them a couple of times in the UK at Slough and Reading but often seen round the Med as you say in open ground and lawns. I love the haunting African "hub-hub-hub" call which seems to carry for miles.

    Great finding your own. Reminds me of c25 years ago when i left ex-wife at the top of a track in Cornwall while i had "a quick look to see if i could see anything interesting". When i came back she asked me what bird is bright yellow and about the size of a starling. So while I had gone down the track a golden oriole had appeared right in front of her for 5 mins and of course was now long gone. For those who don't know they look like this (not my photo) and are a rare vagrant to the UK coastline on migration and very rare breeder in East Anglia.
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2018
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  28. RookeryDad

    RookeryDad Squad Player

    I'd have checked the neck for the telltale tattoo &, on spotting it, given the assailant our secret Orns handshake, welcoming the young Forestieri to our WFC brotherhood (& sisterhood).
     
  29. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Finding your own one's brilliant of course but when you're nine it's extra special. I've never found another one in the UK since although I've seen a few that others have found.
     
  30. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Peregrines are currently breeding on the YMCA building in Watford, on the BT building by the 'magic roundabout' in Hemel, on Aylesbury town hall and on the Charing X hospital branch in Hammersmith. I can see the latter from the new girlfriend's balcony.

    Amazing really when you consider the parlous state they were in half a century ago.
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2018
  31. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    So many pigeons around I've always been amazed its taken them so long to move into town and city centres. I guess its just the shortage of breeding sites as most high up spots are disturbed by humans
     
  32. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    I was arrested for ******* into a lagoon in Cancun. I thought the signs warning of crocodiles were for tourists, but apparently there are loads of them there, though they rarely attack people. Still, little Moog is abashed at the thought of being nipped off by the chompers of a ton and a half croc.

    In any case, they assumed (the cops, not the reptiles) I was American and demanded a $1000 fine. I refused and allowed myself to be escorted back to the station in the back of a Police . They also went to arrest my two friends who'd been ******* up the shoreline, but I tricked them into admitting in broken Eengleesh that they hadn't, in fact, witnessed them passing urine and couldn't, therefore prove that they hadn't been harmlessly viewing the waterline. Me, however, they'd seen in full flow and so I couldn't argue my way out of it, having been caught in flagrante de **** to.

    Anyway after stubbornly sitting in the middle of the station for 2 hours, demanding to speak to the British consulate and insisting that I was very well connected at the highest level within the dimplomatic circle, they just wanted me out so settled for $100 and off I went.
     
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  33. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    After finishing 2nd year at Uni myself & 3 mates from my college decided to stay the summer getting jobs & renting a house that that year's residents had vacated for the holidays. One of the 3 was studying medicine (& is now a quite renowned expert on inherited renal malfunction). One weekend a couple of mates from home came to stay the weekend & one of them could not find his wallet after a journey in a punt. He reported it to the police as it also had his passport in it.

    The next weekend, on the way home from the pub, we "liberated" a couple of safety cones fitted with flashing orange lights that were ringing a big hole in the pavement the water board had dug, and positioned them attractively in our kitchen.

    The next morning (a Sunday), we were woken by the loud creaking made when the garden gate opened, followed by the medic yelling maniacally "it's the fuzz, it's the fuzz, hide the stash, hide the stash!" As 3 bedroom windows opened allowing for the hurling of 3 separate plastic bags into the graveyard the house backed onto, we also heard the repeated flushing of the bog as Mr Medic desperately disposed of his stock via more permanent means. He could not afford to get busted, being a medic student with all the pre-ordained career plans laid out in front of him.

    Anyway, the door bell rang & I opened it to 2 boys in blue, who enquired whether a certain "Mr. S......y" was available. This was the name of the lad who'd lost his wallet the week before & when I told them he was back in Watford, they asked if they could pop in so I could sign a docket accepting receipt of the (cash-less but passport-bearing) retrieved wallet. As they walked in they gave a knowing smile as they espied the flashing cones.

    As Mr Medic descended into increasing manic hysteria, I asked if they fancied a cuppa as the kettle was clearly boiling on the hob. To Medic's horror, they accepted, and he scurried away to lock himself in the same loo in which he'd just finished frantically flushing away the evidence.
    The 2 cops sat down at the table in the only other room that was not a bedroom, & I reached past them to pick up an ex-girlfriend's gift of tasteful brown smoked-glass jars bearing the legends "Tea" and "Sugar", only to remember with some degree of concern that the other TWO jars in the set were captioned "Coffee" & "Cannabis". Sure enough, there they were in full view of the 2 cops who were wearing expressions that could be described "inscrutable", whilst I attempted to convince myself they were actually "wry grins". I also comforted myself in the certainty the "Cannabis" jar would be empty...."only a joke gift, occifers", I could say.
    I'm sure I could hear the sound of a wounded animal whimpering plaintively in the bathroom.

    The coppers finished their tea thanking us graciously as it was their first drink for a while, and advised us that the 2 flashing cones had better be restored to their rightful place within 15 minutes, or.....I think we knew what they meant. When we returned from this act of repatriation, 3 of us dashed into the graveyard to retrieve the 3 plastic bags, whilst Mr Medic went back to bed, nursing "a migraine, if not something worse".

    "Don't know what you were panicking about" we told him as we opened the clearly-empty offending jar.....which immediately unfurled its contents of a plastic bag still containing readily-identifiable grains of a strange crumbly black resiny substance.

    How we laughed...
     
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  34. KelsoOrn

    KelsoOrn Squad Player

    Good to see that the last two contributions have been far more in line with the original intentions of this thread.
     
  35. PhilippineOrn

    PhilippineOrn First Team

    Bit harsh on my burnt milk story.
     

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