Things to Do on a Bank Holiday

Yesterday was a bank holiday. I am sure many people plan well in advance exactly how they are going to spend their time on such occasions. No doubt some of you had earmarked the day for some birding and were delighted to see the Met Office predicting cold, crisp and sunny. Personally I had a full day's piking planned and could not have wished for a less inspiring forecast. Still, a plan is a plan and 'you have to be in it to win it' is a cliché, so there I was on the canal at first light. Pretty soon I was noticing what other people were doing with their bank holiday...

Some were propelling a quad skull through the water as fast as possible. Those things can fly. The first came by while most decent citizens were still in their dressing gowns, and the crew were clearly experts. Eight oars in perfect harmony is very impressive. I doubt they improve the pike fishing though. However, people doing strenuous exercise on a thin boat in scanty clothing on a freezing morning were in the minority; far more popular were walking the dog, walking off the festive bloat, jogging, cycling and birding. There were so many people around that I couldn't avoid having to talk to one or two. None of the passing birders stopped for a chat though, which surprised me a bit because I spent quite a lot of my time scanning around with bins and looking vaguely birder-like. Yes, I had decided to write down a list of 'Birds Seen While Fishing'.

My final tally was 44 species. It probably would have been higher if I'd worked at it a bit harder but I did spend a few hours trying very hard to catch a pike, which involves active effort and concentration. Once I'd resigned myself to the inevitable blank which the weather had made so likely my list increased rapidly. I wonder if a birder would be able to work out where I was fishing simply from my bird list? Of course there are already too many other clues in both this post and recent NQS in general to make that question much of a challenge, but how many places in the UK could you be fishing for pike and see this particular combination: Brent Goose, Grey Plover, Redshank, Dunlin, Golden Plover, Avocet, Cetti's Warbler, Tufted Duck, Shoveler and Barnacle Goose? Of course, there must be loads of places where you might see most of that lot. But where else could you see all of them? Now that is a challenge.

So, I spent a nice bank holiday soaking some dead sea fish in a canal. Dusk came, darkness fell. The sky was amazingly clear. I brewed up a fresh cuppa and leaned back in my chair to gaze upwards. In a short space of time I saw four shooting stars, one the brightest (though not the longest) I've ever witnessed. Stunning. I packed up around 7pm. Everything was already covered in frost...