Kingfishers, etc

This morning as I was walking briskly through the woods near Farnbrough North station I again saw a kingfisher. It flew low over one of the lakes and then, with wings outstretched, landed in the lower branches of a birch tree on a wooded island.

Zoe has now seen a kingfisher for herself.   On two occasions while we were walking past the middle lake in the Reading University grounds she has seen one fly into the bushes on the eastern bank.  However, on neither occasion, was I quick enough to see it for myself. 

Getting back to the woods near Farnbrough North, a couple of mammal stories:

A week or so ago I was walking along the path when I heard a splash from the river.  I looked round and noticed a branch on a overhanging tree shaking.  Then I saw an animal swimming rapidly to the bank.  A rather bedraggled squirrel pulled itself up onto the bank and than scrambled back up the tree, out of which it must have just fallen.

This afternoon as I was hurrying through the woods to catch the 1pm train, I became aware of a deer watching me from about 20 metres into the wood.  Previously when I have seen deer in those woods (about once per year) they have run off as fast as they could.   This one it just stood and stared at me, so I stopped and stared back.  After about 30 seconds, I realized that it must be waiting for me to walk on so it could get to the riverbank to drink.  I have previously seen a deer crossing the path at that point, and the riverbank is the only place it could have been going to.  Having worked that out, I hurried on to catch my train.

Long-Tailed Tits

A week or two ago Zoe and I were in her bedroom when she pointed out a flock of small birds flitting about in the chestnut trees in front of our flats.  I immediately recognised them as long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus). We leant against the window-sill and watched them as they 'leap-frogged' each other round the trees, presumably looking for things to eat.  Just when you think you have seen them all, a straggler swoops in from another tree. Flocks of long-tailed tits remind me of loose clusters of stars like the Hyades where most of the members are travelling as a concentrated ball of stars, but there is also a loose association of outliers that are travelling in the same direction.

Goldcrests

This Saturday Liz and Zoe saw a goldcrest (Regulus regulus) in the Reading University grounds.  I remember seeing one back in January, on a frosty morning as I was walking between Farnborough and Frimley.  They seem so tiny that I am surprised that they can survive cold weather.

On Saturday Zoe said they also saw a darkish pheasant-like bird which might have been a female golden pheasant, possibly the mate of the male one they saw in October - it was also on the drive to Foxhill House.  However, they did not get a good look at it before it disappeared into the bushes.

Hip Priest - The Story of Mark E.Smith and The Fall by Simon Ford

The late John Peel has a lot to answer for.  A few months ago I came across three (yes three!) books about The Fall in the Reading Broad Street branch of Waterstone's bookshop.   I thought that Mark E.Smith must have died, or at least have been given a knighthood.  

I first heard The Fall when I was at Leeds University in 1978, on the Peel program of course.  Back then they were very rough indeed, but I was impressed enough to seek out and buy Bingo Master's Break-Out! and Live at the Witch Trials.  I followed them through Dragnet, Fiery Jack, How I Wrote Elastic Man, Totally Wired, and on to Hex Enduction Hour in 1982.  After that, I must have become more responsible, for the only other Fall records I bought were The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall (1984) and Bend Sinister (1986).  Then I lost track of them completely for several years.  It was only when I started listening to BBC Radio 6 on broadband that I learned that The Fall, or rather Mark E.Smith and the current version of The Fall, are still active and producing good stuff in 2004.

The key element of The Fall has always been Smith's inscrutable lyrics which are completely unlike anything else in contemporary music.  A lesser, but still important feature has been the driving wall of noise produced by the rest of the band.  The overall effect is best summed up by quoting Danny Kelly's description (NME 1984 Nov 10):

"The wall of rhythm generated by the Hanleys and the great and loyal Karl Burns is huge and brutal.  Craig Scanlon and Brix Smith drill shockingly harsh metal guitars into the heart of the beast.  Where the babblings of the wordSmith used to be a part of an urban guerrilla cell - mercurial, fragmented, chancy - they now find themselves riding atop Krupp's wet dream, a black, invincible war machine.  The noise is crude, cruel, inescapable and authoritarian.  Smith has always been a lucky bastard, chucking his writing bag of words into the music like a carcass into a set of propellers, to watch the result spin off not as gore and offal, but diamonds, a tour de force of inexplicable sorcery."

As well as quotations, Ford's book is full of interviews with many past and present members of  the band, some interviewed specially for the book, others culled from old music magazines and books.  Smith comes across as almost impossible to live and work with, and one has to admire the dedication of Steve Hanley, Craig Scanlon, Karl Burns, Martin Bramah, Kay Carroll, Brix Smith, and the others for sticking with him for as long as they did.  Whenever the band looked like it was getting to be successful, Mark E.Smith would insist on making a new start, for example by changing their record company.  On one occasion Smith apparently fired his whole band because they wouldn't make the sound that he wanted.  A few days later he went and got his ears syringed and found out the problem had actually been in his hearing, not in their playing.  But they stayed because they were in awe of his ability to come up with ideas and words.  Some of this awe comes across in reading Marc Riley's reaction after the recording of 'Iceland' as recounted by Colin Irwin (Melody Maker 1981 Sep 26):

"No, we didn't know what he was going to do either," says Riley in a state of euphoria later. "He just said he needed a tune, something Dylanish, and we knocked around on the piano in the studio and came up with that. But we hadn't heard the words until he suddenly did them. We did 'Fit And Working' on 'Slates' in exactly the same way.Yeah, I suppose it is amazing really..."

As Ford says, once you have been a fan of The Fall you can never escape it: even now when I walk past a pelican crossing and it goes beep-beep-beep... in the back of my mind I hear Mark E.Smith spitting out:

Got eighteen months for espionage,
Too much brandy for breakfast,
And people tend to let you down,
It's a swine.... 
Fantastic life!

Ours is not to look back, ours is to continue the crack.  (Argggh!  I think I had better go and lie down.)

Diving behaviour in a Lesser Black-Backed Gull

While walking with Zoe around the Reading University lakes this morning, I noticed a lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) sitting on the water.  Suddenly, it flapped its wings as if taking off but rose only a few feet into the air and then dived head-first back into the water, almost immediately coming to the surface again.  I saw it perform this trick twice, so it was obviously deliberate.  Maybe it was trying to catch a fish and needed to get a certain amount of momentum to get deep enough to reach it.  After the second dive, the gull then slowly meandered its way around the lake as if looking for something else to dive for, but we didn't see it dive again.