Twitching

Dont worry Mum I have not developed a weird twitch or muscle spasm, I'm blogging today about all serious birdwatchers keeping a life list of bird species that they see (or “twitch”) during their birding pursuits. Keeping a life list becomes an interesting and challenging obsession. In tracking down target species there are no guarantees that a particular bird will stay in one area or even turn up when it is expected. Just to catch a glimpse of a rarity can be a real buzz, but to get a “crippling” view (i.e. to really see the bird close up and for a good long viewing time) would be the ultimate in sheer delight for a birdwatcher, OK I copied that from a website btw I'm just watching mine out of a kitchen window and getting a "crippling view" sounds sore so I'm not going there. I have seen some nice wee birds I think one is a starling and another a great tit I'm sure I've seen them in Australia, maybe at Bondi Beach, no that was a seagul Rob.

Its a nice day here and I'm hopeing it stays dry enough to get the grass cut, the landlord left a honda lawnmower here and John and I spent about an hour trying to start it, had the plug out and carbi off before we discovered it has a wee handle that has to be held on to or the engine wont fire lol. So much for my marine engineers ticket and Johns gardening experience lol.

Well its cut and I've been shopping and collected the mail, got my certificate of company registration, of course its at the wrong address as was the Eircom tellephone letter yesterday they addressed it to 9 Abhainn Ruibhe which is the Gaelic for Owen Riff or (sulfur river) so named because sulphur stones were found in the river in 1666 and 1667, a period of extraordinary drought. Stones of a similar type were also found when the Board of Works was deepening the river in 1960.The name of the river was anglicised to Owenriff. Thing is the posty doesnt speak Gaelic so everything addressed to Abhainn Ruibhe ends up with an incorrect postal address sticker on it and someone at Eircom is really nationalistic and promptly changes the address back into Gaelic so the mail is often late lol. Probably anyone sending me mail should send it to Rob Shairp, 9 Owen Riff, or Abhainn Ruibhe, or Sulfer river, Oughterard, Galway ohh and theres no postcodes here did I mention that?

Theres also a thing called a "Twitchathon"