PFW - unusual Downy WP count

Dick Methinks one has strayed from your nest and entered a place of death for avian titbits.

As a UK birder, I had to look up DWP's, bit like our lesser spotted?

JT

Hi John, Yup, according to my "Bird Table Book", Tony Soper, UK 1994, the North American Downy WP looks very much like the Lesser Spotted. So that's what you do when you're not tasting wine. :-)

Cheers, Dick >

Salut/Hi John,

le/on Sun, 1 Feb 2004 18:38:07 -0000, tu disais/you said:-

Yes, I spotted that, but thought he was flying a kite - a red one, of course. but the silly buzzard simply made a mistake. So I swiftly swallowed my pride, and returned to being a great tit.

Are we the only RSPB members in France?

Oh for goodness sake, I made a mistake. Red Kites? Silly buzzards? Geeez! What's the RSPB anyway?

Dick :-)

Ian Hoare wrote:

Hi, Ian -

What in the _hell_ are you all talking about? Is this about dinner fare on the wing?

What wine would you serve with Downy WPs? ;^)

Tom S

Would someone care to translate this into a language that can be understood by everyone here?

Thank you in advance,

M.

Salut/Hi Michael Pronay,

This is a reply to you AND the others!

le/on 2 Feb 2004 08:23:41 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

John Taverner, is a twitcher - from all acounts in a fairly advanced stage of the disease. My wife is in the early stages (A twitcher is twitcher speak for someone who travels long distances to see rare wild birds). I'm not affected by the illness, though I have absorbed some of the jargon, and know enough bird names to make some stoopid puns.

Downy WP is a downy woodpecker. I rejected all thoughts of puns based on this, as not being suitable for mixed company!

A red Kite is a large bird of prey.

So is a buzzard

A swift and a swallow are both smallish birds which build nests in or near human habitation. A pride is a collective term for a family of lions, but that's entirely irrelevant.

A great tit is ALSO a bird, as well as a pejorative expression. I could with equal or more accurancy have called myself a "bearded tit".

RSPB is the "Royal Society for the Protection of Birds", they recently made idiots of themselves by backing claims by Portuguese cork oak growers that switching away from cork closures for wine bottles would endanger the wild robin population. (which almost brings this whole post back on topic.)

Thanks a lot, Ian. I guess all these fan clubs have their own jargon. I nkow that from the train spotting department. Those railway fanatics quite frequently are called "Pufferküsser" in German: "Buffer kissers", hoping that "buffer" is the rigth term for the part of railway coaches that touch each other when coupled together.

Leaves us only with "round tuit" and "PFW count"?

M.

Sir You malign me :-) , I am not a twitcher, well Ok, I once went on a little twitch to hunt for Hoopoe, but that was the only time temptation got the better of me. I am a birder, I look at birds, twitchers have a tick list...........bit like trainspotting.

Now back OT, I do confess to twitching fine wines. I have been known to travel to the big city to taste and purchase wines. Now over 55, I can get a geriatric day return for 10 quid. An advantage of ageing?

JT

Hi Michael, When I get around to it. Or, one of these days I'll get around to (doing) it. In recent years this expression has found its way onto a wooden coin called a "Round Tuit" that might be given to you by your significant other as a prompt to do a repair, painting, or other project you've been putting off.

PFW is Project Feeder Watch conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. People in the USA and Canada report counts and varieties of birds that visit their birdfeeders in the winter.

Cheers, Dick

Salut/Hi John Taverner,

le/on Mon, 2 Feb 2004 14:52:04 -0000, tu disais/you said:-

Then I retract with humblest apologies. The worst twitcher I knew (apart from my aunt, who was only a little more twitchy than your good self) was a fried of my Aunt's. She once cajoled Aunt Isabel to take her and two of her friends in search of some obscure migratory bird (tern perhaps) to Northern Scotland from North Norfolk. For fun they added up their combined ages - it came to >300 years between them! Completely mad!

Ah yes, Eupope Epops. I nearly ran one down a couple of miles from here. It would INSIST on believing that if it flattened itself against the road, we wouldn't keep on hunting it!! Very spectacular colouring. We have a lot of good birds here, actually. Driving with Jacquie can be rather a stop/go affair as she sees some minute speck in the sky and then glues her eyes on it in the hopes of working out whether it's a Hieraaetus pennatus or merely Cicaetus gallicus, both of which nest not far from here.

Chuckle. Quite true.

I can confess to bettering you there. Many years ago, before I was much interested in wine, we were camping near Auxerre with friends. One, something of a wine lover, insisted on "showing" me Burgundy. So we solemnly drove the 100 miles down to the Côte d'Or. Once there, he had me take to the hills, where upon his instructions, we screeched to a stop. He got out, bent down and stroked a bunch of grapes. When I asked him what the heck he thought he was doing he said "I've always wanted to touch La Tâche, so now I've done better." He was all set to have us leave right away, without even seeing the Hospice de Beaune or ANYTHING. Since then.... I'm afraid the virus has struck.

Do you improve with decantation, or does that only work to take away any initial funkiness?

Let us see if this thread concerning birds can be related to wine.

I have a green-cheeked Amazon parrot aka Mexican Red Head aka Cherry Head who will be 21 this April. He is my disposer for wine corks. I cut off part of the top of the cork that may have been in contact with the metal capsule. He often licks the cork and then grinds it up into small particles. If he rejects the cork, you can be sure the wine is really bad. So if you need a wine cork disposer accessory, consider a parrot. But the parrot must be carefully watched when out. He has no trouble chewing up hardwood including parts of chairs and such.

Concerning WPs I have at least 3 types that visit my trees here in central US. One is tiny, about the size of a sparrow. Giant WPs visit for a very few days every year. They work on large dead limbs that the smaller WPs can not handle. You always know when they have arrived, because the sound they make in pecking is far louder that that of the small and medium sized WPs. Sorry, but I do not know the proper names for wild WPs.

] Michael Pronay wrote: ] > Ian Hoare wrote: ] > ] >>>>>>Hi All, I finally found my "round-tuit" and entered my PFW ] >>>>>>counts for January. PFW thought a sighting of 6 Downy WPs at ] >>>>>>one time was unusual (so did I), and asked me to confirm the ] >>>>>>number - just in case ] >>>>>

] ] > ] > Leaves us only with "round tuit" and "PFW count"? ] > ] > M. ] Hi Michael, ] When I get around to it. Or, one of these days I'll get around ] to (doing) it. In recent years this expression has found its ] way onto a wooden coin called a "Round Tuit" that might be ] given to you by your significant other as a prompt to do ] a repair, painting, or other project you've been putting off. ] ] PFW is Project Feeder Watch conducted by the Cornell Lab of ] Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. People in the USA and Canada ] report counts and varieties of birds that visit their birdfeeders ] in the winter. ] ] Cheers, ] Dick ] ]

Hi Dick,

In my callow youth I had a lunch at the Friars (even then better known for whiskey and cigars than wine) with Henny Youngman at the table. He pulled the Round Tuit gag on me, ending with the presentation of the wooden coin. I still have it somewhere, I expect.

This would have been the early 70s sometime, and since then I've always assumed Henny was the inventor of the joke; it certainly fits his style! :)

-E

;-)

Thank you,

M.

Hi Emery, Henny Youngman, one of the greats (for those of us who are old enough to remember him). Didn't realize the "Round Tuit" had been around that long. Might be interesting to do some research ... when I get a "Round Tuit". :-) Cheers, Dick

Thought it was a misspelling of tweet? :-) Anders

Depends how they've been cooked (although I'm willing to defer to Ian's superior knowledge. Sojourner

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