Egyptian Goose – ID parade

Michael Ruggins wrote today:

Pete,

I suppose one of these days I shall get up of a morning and see half of the stuff you regularly record day in and day out. For instance, at the Gas Bridge I simply don’t get a sandpiper green or common or purple-hazed and, although I always expect to, I rarely see a grey wagtail and not always a pied (one of those based in Tesco’s carpark and only at the overspill gasometer for short-stay purposes, do you reckon?) but I frequently hear one there.

In my defence, as you know, I most often trundle around in the afternoon approaching dusk with Max in tow. I daresay he’ll soon become one of 2011’s grounded barn owl statistics but at least I can see him in the dark. Yesterday we passed Little and Large, like sentries on night duty, standing three metres apart and facing across the Navigation between BW’s stainless steel water filler and Dave’s greasy spoon. l suspect they are imprinted on me and Max as dual white-haired nocturnal zombies they can safely ignore, with little more than a quavery shelgoose mumble in the throat as we pass by in peace.

Are they, however, the genuine Little and Large? And not the Droopies? A passport photo is needed, I feel, to substantiate their respective identities. The real Large, a loner, who spent a great deal of his non-working days in the past couple of years admiring his reflexion in the BW chrome mirror – your anthropomorphic view benevolently tongue-in-cheek – or fiercely attacking a doppelganger rival – the boring bto social-science take on such behaviour – now appears to be fixated on Little much more diligently. His constancy is a revelation.

Will it endure, I ask myself and Max, whose appetite for wildfowl is forever virginal and unsatisfied. Is he (Little) in love, is she female, or are they gay fashionistas? Is he even a male, I wonder. All I know is that his isolationist stance of yesteryear, when he’d tolerate an egyptian buddy or another pair for a matter of days only, has been sacrificed on the altar of blissful togetherness. He no longer hugs and craves the water pump. Hurrah…

Yet we still have to find empirical evidence and proof that L & L and the Droopies are who we think they are. Maybe Big Dave (Cottridge) can set up his 15 grand’s worth of Nikon and give us 150+ digital images that confirm who’s a hero and who a villain. Meanwhile your opinion would be appreciated sometime this week. 8 days, remember, in your fulsome week and not the measly 7 everyone else is restricted to by boring precedence and habit. Why aren’t we all mathematicians like you, Pete? With a degree to testify to it too.

Michael