Hello Sunshine Person!
Welcome to my Biking Birder blog.
My name is Gary Brian Prescott and I am known
as The Biking Birder.
Since my first Biking Birder adventure back
in 2010, the story of which I am currently telling, I have had five other
Biking Birder adventures.
From I to VI, here goes . . .
BBI – 2010 A whole year cycle around the
United Kingdom visiting every RSPB, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, nature
reserve and W&WT, Wildfowl & Wetland Trust visitor’s centre.
(251 bird species seen)
BBII – 2015 A repeat of 2010 but with more
RSPB reserves to visit and a change of route in order to add some of the summer
migrant bird species missed in 2010.
BBIII – 2016 Just continued cycling with the
aim of trying to beat The European BIGBY record. Big Green Big Year, Ponc Feliu
Latorre of Catalonia, Spain held the record having seen 304 bird species by
cycling in NE Spain/Catalonia.
The story of my BIGBY is in a book available
on Amazon . . .
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Biking-Birder-2016-Quest-Adventures-ebook/dp/B07969N4HH/ref=sr_1_1?crid=160HH8C6QW2FE&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.mQRNwTgcNDeiXGtnGsJlhRSKzJTKu58i-kbCTU4OLutxf70H3CZ1PILpZIy8O0dt1COhHCJUAxEhOxzCESBmS3lk1wAlyZDiJ1kYbFJyCF1d9kc_xEBnv5ELK4GIHAm3.ibGDiYsnvX4frsj_DSkKP8jFPfK6wxYOgHmBqITFiuo&dib_tag=se&keywords=biking+birder+2016&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1736756129&sprefix=biking+birder+2016%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-1
BBIV – 2018 A six month Peruvian adventure, I
cycled from Lima to The Manu National Park, three months of cycling over The
Andes. In the Manu, having given the bike away, I used an Alpaca packraft to
paddle down an Amazon tributary called the Madre de Dios.
BBV – 2019. Well the aim was to cycle back
from the Ebro Delta Bird Festival in Spain/Catalonia. Unfortunately the bike’s
back wheel had other ideas as I cycled in the Pyrenean foothills!
BBVI – 2022 No fossil fuel transport of any
kind being allowed for a ‘clean’ BIGBY, I spent the whole year cycling on the
British mainland, most time spent along the east coast, trying once more to
break Ponc’s European BIGBY record.
So there you have it.
More Biking Birder adventures to come!
13th January Feed the birds, tuppence a bag Mary Poppins
The news was on a large TV attached to the
wall at one end of the dining area. The news told of a huge earthquake in
Haiti, seven on the Richter scale and the strongest there since 1770, with
hundreds dead, possibly thousands.
Dressed for the bitterly cold weather, looking more like a campouflaged Michelin Man, I left the hostel and made my way
to Trafalgar Square, then through Admiralty Arch and into the beautiful, snow
deep landscape of St James’ Park. Beneath a canopy of brilliant white hoar
frost covered branches, I walked down to the waterside of the large, long lake.
What birds could I count on my Green Year list? Feeding the birds using uneaten toast from the breakfast room, I thought that maybe the Greylags [77] may
be wilder than the Mallards present. The other duck species present, well I had already seen
them all at Barnes WWT reserve.
I read the notice board beside a closed for
the winter café that detailed the history of the park; how it had started as a
pig farm centuries ago and had been the site of a leper colony. The area had
been bought by Henry VIII as a place for him to hunt deer and then James I. had
built a duck decoy.
More avian connections continued with huge White Pelicans being sent
here centuries ago as a gift from a Russian ambassador for Charles II, with an
aviary built later. More recently the pelicans of St James’ Park have achieved
notoriety for their penchant for eating the local pigeons. I well remember the
whole of a front page of a horrible tabloid newspaper, the disgusting and
pernicious Sun newspaper, being taken up by a photograph of a forlorn looking
pigeon looking out from a pelican’s pouch. Going, going, gone ran the headline
with a series of photographs showing the swallowing of and the slow demise of
the pigeon.
Today a reedbed has been added with Water Rails resident and Sedge
Warblers in the summer but I had to content myself with geese, ducks and gulls;
Lesser Black-backed, Herring, Common and Black-headed, and a Goldcrest. House
Sparrow numbers were well down on what I remember from visits in the early
1990s, when they used to come on your hand to feed if one presented them with
bird seed.
Now it was a good job that I had written all of this down in my notebook
for as I sat at the table on the balcony of the closed café, two police
officers asked me to go around to the building’s side, lean against it and
proceeded to search me and ask questions as to what I was up to.
Obvious to me now but back then I was dressed for the weather and
carrying my lunch, a tin of mackerel, jar of pate and some bread. Feed the
birds, tuppence a bag. PC Alan and PC Darren had been alerted to a suspicious
person carrying binoculars and writing notes by an old couple. Well, I was
wearing camouflage clothes and there were bulges in places due to the thermals
and extra jumpers that could have been anything. I was also practically
equidistant between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. For fifteen minutes
or so they frisked me, searched all of my pockets and examined my notebook,
wrote down details and made phone calls. By the end we were all laughing, them
with relief I suppose and me at my embarrassment. The ‘off you go’ was friendly
but they did not keep their promise of sponsorship; no promised donations for
the charities I was supporting were forthcoming. I walked a hundred yards onward
and was approached by three more officers of the law. I just pointed to Alan
and Darren still in view and said I had already been processed.
Great! Less than two weeks into
the trip and I had almost broken the bike beyond repair and had almost been
arrested for looking like a terrorist. What would the rest of the year bring?
London looked so beautiful with a
covering of a few inches of snow and after my escapade with the law I was in
high spirits as I made my chastened way past Buckingham Palace and along to
Hyde Park Corner. Here I went into the Wellington Arch, which is the one with
the hugely impressive statue of Boudicca riding her chariot on top. Inside
there were lifts and stairways with exhibitions detailing London traffic;
stated upon which was the fact that traffic moved no quicker now around Hyde
Park Corner than it did when it was all horse and carts. At least nowadays
London traffic does not produce a thousand tonnes of horse manure a day, like
it did back then. I wonder what they did with it all.
Up on the balcony I looked over the high wall into the extensive gardens
of Buckingham Palace and threw snowballs on snowballing students far below. A
bit cowardly of me actually as there was no way they could get their revenge. Back
on ground level, I went over to the poignant Australian War Memorial, which
listed the names of the 99,000 Australians killed in the two World Wars, with
23,844 Australian place names inscribed where families grieved for lost family
members.
War memorials always affect me deeply, maybe due to the fact that my
grandfather, my father’s father Charles, had been in the First World War as a
soldier in one of the ‘Pals’ regiments; the 14th Battalion of the
Warwickshire’s. My Dad's dad, Grandad Prescott had been wounded three times and
as all who lived through the war, carried his scars, mental and physical, to
his grave.
Three years previous, 2007, I had spent the summer school holiday weeks
travelling around France and had visited the Somme Memorial at Thiepval. There,
on the first stanchion of the four that supported this huge monument to the
thousands of the dead, was the name of a Prescott. Was he a relative? I did not
know.
From the Australian War Memorial I crossed the busy road and went into
the London town house residency of the old Duke of Wellington, Apsley House.
The most impressive room was called the ‘Plate Room,’ which displayed the
famous Serres Egyptian Dessert service. This comprised of a long Egyptian model
made of porcelain and had originally been a divorce present from Napoleon to
the Empress Josephine. Strangely enough Josephine did not want it. “Not tonight,
Josephine!” At least she did not throw this beautiful item back at him. Instead
in 1818, it was given to the Duke of Wellington by King Louise XVIII. It really
was a thing of beauty, being over six metres long depicting the temples of
Karnak, Dendera and Philae.
Around the same room, displayed in ornate cabinets were dozens of gold
bordered plates depicting Spanish cities, with six dinner services given by
William III of Prussia to the Duke for his role in the defeat of Napoleon.
Outside of this impressive room, at the base
of a long stairway, was a less than subtle huge, four-metre-high, marble statue
of a naked Napoleon. The sculptor Canova had modelled Napoleon on the God,
Mars. Anyway Napoleon had not liked it so he had it consigned to the basement
of the Louvre until it was bought for 66,000 Francs by King George VI and given
to the Duke. Maybe the discreet fig leaf was ‘trop petit’ for the diminutive
Napoleon.
The rest of the house had large oil painting portraits hanging everywhere
there was space and various mirrors taken from the Palais de Versailles. Indeed
many oil painting 'photographs' of the main characters from the Battle of
Waterloo, incidentally which was fought on my birthday, the 18th of June,
adorned the house. I say photographs because it shows their role at the time.
These were invariably huge canvases to suit the ego of the person I suppose. One
in particular painting caught my eye; a more subtle work entitled 'Lovers with
Woman Listening' by Nicholas Maes. Delightful. A cheeky-faced eavesdropper
hiding behind a door as a couple sat holding hands whispering sweet nothings in
the next room. Jennifer, one of the attendants showed me the hidden Versailles
windows and was a charming guide to the house. English Heritage should give her
a raise.
Outside again, there was still snow on the ground as I made my way past
the Royal Albert Hall and down the road to the Science Museum in South
Kensington. Once inside, and checked Alan and Darren style, I went through to
my favourite part of the museum, the space artefacts. Here they have a full-size
lunar module, all gold and silver with the famous steps down one side, steps I
could stare at and imagine that most wonderful of events when Neil descended
them back in 1969. Within the large concourse there was also the actual command
module from Apollo 9. Unlike the Lunar Module, this had actually been into space.
Maybe it is one of those ‘I remember where I was’ moments in history,
like where one was when Kennedy got shot, or John Lennon murdered or when
Princess Diane died. I remember all too well where I was when Neil Armstrong
said those unforgettable words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap
for Mankind.’ I was twelve years old and in Paris. My Mum and Dad had swapped
me for three weeks for a French boy named Christian Nolot. Well swapped maybe
too dramatically put but for three weeks I stayed with him and his family in
Colombes, North Paris and after that Christian came to live with my family, on
our family home for three weeks, then in Redditch, Worcestershire. I remember
being extremely shy and embarrassed by the French greeting custom of kissing
beautiful French girls on the cheek and how I used the thrust my British hand forward
to deflect their proffered lips. I remember how I really did not like the
arrogant Christian and got on better with his younger brother but most of all I
remember the night of the Moon landing. My bed was on a sofa settee in the
lounge and as the Moon walk approached, I was suffering from a bad asthma
attack at the time and Christian’s stepmother was looking after me. The fact
that her negligee was see through did not help! A doctor was called for and I
wheezed my way through the black and white pictures that eventually showed Neil
hazily descending the Eagle’s steps. A moment of history that still brings
sentimental tears to my eyes.
I wonder what the 'I remember where I was' moments are for a younger
generation. 9 -11 I suppose stands out of course.
Away from the space travel hall, I marvelled at the Rocket, an ironic
name really for the first steam train. This magnificent machine was present
amongst various cars, planes and trains. Next, I visited an exhibition about
the Copenhagen Convention on Climate Change, with details of that and Kyoto.
“Copenhagen is not a failure …… if we agree to meet again and deal with issues
that are still pending.” So spoke the Brazilian Climate Change ambassador at
the talks. Reading the text presented, it seemed to amount to little more than
massive procrastination to me. Five hundred billion tonnes of carbon added to
the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began and yet Climate Change
cynics would have you believe that this has had no effect on the Earth’s
climate.
One could leave comments, placing on record
what you thought about the climate change issue. Having left my thoughts I was
approached by a young Spanish girl from Barcelona, Maria. She wanted help in
translating what she wanted to put into English and after some time we typed
that 'the World will still be here after humans are extinct because of their
self-induced Climate Change.'
Next, I went into an empty IMAX theatre to watch the film about the
International Space Station, the ISS. Now I love IMAX films, well most of the
ones I have seen anyway. I do remember the 3D Tyrannosaurus rex film, which
started brightly but ended with the scientist’s daughter giving a female T- rex
her stolen eggs back! Eating the girl would have been more realistic, just as in
the toilet scene in the film Jurassic Park. I have only once been in an IMAX
with an audience of more than twenty people in it. That was at the Kennedy
Space Centre in Florida whilst waiting with my wife, Karen and our children for
a space shuttle take off. Otherwise they have always been almost empty. Surely
free tickets for school parties would be advantageous to them. Maybe this form
of theatre will be more popular once they start to show mainstream movies as
well as those of a documentary nature.
Anyway, back to the moment and the 3D film, the lift off of the Russian
rocket carrying the first piece of the ISS jigsaw was spectacular and the lift
off the US Space Shuttle likewise. With fabulous views of the Earth in all of
its radiance throughout the film, I enjoyed it all as space walks were shown on
the immense screen and, of course, there was time to show what fun
astro/cosmonauts have when in the weightless environment of the space station.
Later I noticed that the Science Museum was taking part in the 10:10
initiative, where it was trying to reduce its energy usage by 10% over 2010. I
had first seen this amongst the literature that accompanied the superb film DVD
Age of Stupid and knew that this year I would be achieving that target. It
should be an ongoing target for everyone. No it should be an increasing target,
doubling of efforts every ten years! Twenty percent carbon reduction by 2020,
40% by 2030 and 80% by 2040; that way the ‘carbon free’ society would be
guaranteed to be happening before 2050 and our futures, and more importantly
our children’s’ futures would be more secure. Climate Change, this lies behind
everything I would be doing in my almost fossil fuel free Big Year.
Back outside once more and back to walking through the snow again, I
went past the V & A museum, Harrods, Hyde Park Corner and walked on towards
Piccadilly. I did not repeat Billy Connolly’s famous naked streak for Comic
Relief around Anteros, no, not Eros – look it up. Instead I continued on my way
to the same internet café as the day before to do the blog and answer emails.
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