Expensive misbehaviour

Rule of life - work hard and treat others how you would expect to be treated. Evidently that hadn't been the case one October weekend back in 1994. I'd been grounded for something, who knows what for, but I remember distinctly calling the infamous 0891 700249. For those youths who weren't around in those days, this was the Birdline North West hotline and you were fed the news by the voice of mainly Ted Abraham, and occasionally Alan Davies or John Gregory. All heroes to a 13 year old kid. Anyway, that Saturday evening despite knowing I wasn't going anywhere the next day, I phoned Birdline North West 'just to see what was about'. Well, to cut a long story short, it was carnage - two mega birds had been found that day, a Song Sparrow at Seaforth that was 20 miles from home and the first ever twitchable mainland bird (and the first since 1989 anywhere) and a Greater Yellowlegs on the River Eden in Cumbria (the first fully twitchable one since Minsmere in 1985). Bad times for a naughty boy and despite trying, my generally legendary parents did not budge. I must have done something very poor.

And I was punished with 'Song Sparrow Sunday' as it was known at the time. Scillies emptied out, there were big crowds watching from the mound at Seaforth the next morning and the bird performed admirably for the day. As did the Greater Yellowlegs. By the next weekend, I'd evidently managed to get back into my parents' good books but the Song Sparrow was long gone. My Dad took me up to see the Greater Yellowlegs in Cumbria that showed nicely as it fed in a small channel at Rockcliffe. But 24 years later there hadn't been another Song Sparrow! And before the Seaforth one, they'd largely been a Fair Isle speciality - so being honest, I expected to have to pay top dollar to avenge my misbehaviour of 1994. And sure, that was of course the case with the latest one, turning up predictably on that isolated isle...

Song Sparrow Fair Isle, Shetland May 2018

Fair Isle's 2018 Song Sparrow was trapped and ringed in the plantation originally, and then performed nicely through the comfort of the observatory's window as it came to seed in the garden there. Very nice indeed, and a stark contrast in environment to the mean streets of southeast London.