A Christmas Carol

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by TomMckinney on December 20, 2010 · 5 comments

in Birding Western Palearctic

As a special Christmas gift, BirdingBlogs presents…

A Christmas Carol,

by Charles Dickens

Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. Old Marley was as dead as a Mute Swan in Malta.

Scrooge and Marley had been partners for years, travelling Britain and the Western Palearctic in search of new birds, and eventually finding scores of incredible vagrants. All of which they chose to keep quiet, the miserable pair of suppressing bastards. Oh! But Scrooge was a tight-fisted suppressing twat. A misanthropic, hate-filled, clutching, covetous, suppressing old fucking sinner. Hard and sharp, from which no twitcher, county recorder or rarities committee had ever struck out generous fire. The cold, suppressing, mean-spirited wankishness within him froze his old features. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.

In his cold office at the back of the warden’s cottage where he lived, Scrooge looked through his old birding notebooks and chuckled to himself: “Eyebrowed Thrush on National Trust property, and not a single twitcher got to see it!” He flicked forward through the pages and gleefully read out more: “Willet, a first for Britain, and I even walked past a group of birders and never told them!” In the other room his assistant warden Bob Cratchit worked tirelessly at his desk with only a candle to light his laptop screen, on which he was reading an internet discussion on Ornithologyforum about whether you should wear trousers or shorts when out birding. Definately trousers!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!! Bob typed, spelling definately wrong like everyone else does on there. (It’s spelt DEFIN I TELY, for fuck’s sake!)

Scrooge’s door was open, and the peace was suddenly broken. “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried the cheerful voice of Scrooge’s nephew.

“Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!”

“Christmas a humbug, uncle?”

“Merry Christmas? What right do you have to be merry?” Scrooge asked.

“What reason have you to be morose, uncle? You’ve found eight official rarities this year alone, and suppressed every single one of them,” said the cheery nephew.

“Humbug! What’s Christmas-time to you but a time for standing on the bank of shit holes like Draycote Water looking at gulls in the near dark? Or a day spent by a fucking motorway on some Godforsaken collection of gravel pits looking through flocks of Aythya ducks? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be tied up with his own binocular harness and buried with a Manfrotto tripod leg through his heart!”

“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew, “have you never been warmed by the joy of sifting through 10,000 lice-infested gulls only to find one with an unmarked white head that you then spend an hour stringing as a Caspian Gull? Have you never felt the mid-winter glory of wandering around a housing estate looking for Waxwings and getting arrested for using your binoculars outside the entrance to a school?”

Overhearing the conversation, Bob Cratchit involuntarily applauded.

“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge to Bob Cratchit, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your assistant warden job and having to go back to doing wind farm surveys again.”

“Don’t be angry with Bob Cratchit, uncle. Tomorrow is Christmas day. Come to Norfolk with me for a horrendous day of trying to find some shelter from the gales, suffering from frostbite and kidding ourselves that the Snow Goose we see has to be wild because it’s with Pinkfeet, even though there’s a resident feral population on the north Norfolk coast which are about as genuine as a yellow-variant House Finch.”

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge, and pointed to the door.

“Uncle, I plead with you!”

“Good afternoon!”

As the nephew left, two other gentlemen entered: “Mr Scrooge, we are representatives from a Norfolk-based birdspotting publication,” they were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold. “At this festive time of year, it is desirable that those of us able to find and identify our own birds should freely give of information to all the clueless twitchers who rely on us to find their fucking birds for them, and then they can turn up the next day, park illegally, look at the wrong bird, flush it, have a mongoloid discussion with their mates about the British list in which they demonstrate extraordinary ignorance about the differing roles of the BBRC and the BOURC, then fuck off home to add another pathetic number onto their lame Bubo lists, and discover that when updating their blog that night the caps-lock and exclamation mark keys are stuck.”

“Can they not find their own birds?” Scrooge asked.

“Sir, these twitchers are utterly clueless,” said the portly gentleman.

“Do they not have a local patch?”

“They don’t, we wish we could say they do.”

“Is there not a reserve where they can spend the day enjoying the bird life, instead of driving 450 miles to spend twenty minutes looking at a Lesser Scaup and then texting all their mates saying awesome, just got 300 for the year! ?’”

“No reserves for them, sir,” said the even portlier gentleman. “Under the impression that they all have shit for brains, a few of us are endeavouring to find a number of rare birds and then release the news so that these mentally impoverished twitchers can have a very merry Christmas: perhaps a nourishing Ring-necked Duck, or something warming such as an American Robin or a Hume’s Warbler? Or perhaps you’re feeling extra generous this winter, Mr Scrooge? Maybe you could release the news of an exceptional Yank warbler wintering in a back garden? So what shall we put you down for, Mr Scrooge?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied. “I wish to be left alone. I don’t go out flogging my patch all day long, every day of the year, to find a bird which then gets battered by a stampeding group of DSLR photographers all crazed with lust at the thought of getting loads of thumbs-ups and feeble trite comments when they upload their photos later that night! Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

“But Mr Scrooge! It’s Christmas! We implore you to share your bird news!”

“Gentlemen, there’s the door, now kindly fuck off out through it.”

The cold wind slammed the door shut and blew out Bob Cratchit’s candle, so that he was unable to see the photo on Ornithologyforum of a Siskin which someone had posted asking: Saw this bird earlier. Is it the Blakeney Alder Flycatcher?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????

“You’ll want tomorrow off, I suppose?” said Scrooge.

“If quite convenient, sir,” said Bob Cratchit with a timid smile, “I was planning on taking my crippled son Tiny Tim to see a flock of Waxwings.”

“A poor excuse for missing a day of work here on the reserve. But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier the next morning, we have plenty of work to do clearing another big patch of reeds for Bitterns, because we’re completely obsessed with Bitterns for some weird reason. We have to make sure that we’ve got plenty of big stupid things for the general public to come and look at, and then for brain donor Kate Humble to babble about inanely on another catalepsy-inducing series of fucking Springwatch. Can you believe that she’s the president of the RSPB, Bob Cratchit? Kate Humble is the president of the RSPB! You can’t make this stuff up, you know.”

“I know, Mr Scrooge, we’re all going to Hell in a handcart.”

Scrooge was left alone. He boiled up a pack of Super Noodles and retired to his bed chamber, to read through the notes from the time he suppressed Britain’s second ever Varied Thrush. Scrooge’s candle flickered. The cellar door suddenly slammed shut. Was it a gust of wind? “Humbug!” Scrooge said, and continued to read, salivating as he recalled how a group of twitchers were watching a Yellow-browed Warbler just yards away from the Varied Thrush, and he never said a word to them, the miserable suppressing bastard.

But now what was this? A loud booming sound, a rattling of chains, then climbing the stairs. And now Ebeneezer Scrooge’s colour changed as the bedroom door flung open, and there before him was Jacob Marley dragging an enormous Gitzo tripod tied around his waist and wearing seven layers of Jack Pyke camouflage clothing.

“Ebeneezer Scrooge!” the apparition yelled at him.

“Who are you?” Scrooge cried.

“It’s me Jacob Marley. Who do you think it is? Surely everyone knows this story?”

“Yeah, yeah, Jacob Marley… blah blah blah, thought you were dead… three ghosts are going to come along and scare the shit out of me… yeah, I know the story.”

“So nothing’s changed, Scrooge, you’re still a complete fucking bastard.”

“Jacob, why are you carrying around a Gitzo tripod? Oh no! Don’t tell me you’ve become a new generation DSLR photographer in the afterlife? Say it isn’t so, Jacob!”

“Scrooge, this is my punishment for being such a complete twat when I was alive, adopting a mightier-than-thou attitude to birding, looking down with disgust at those new to the hobby, endlessly droning on-and-on like a boring prick about how everything was so much better in the 70s and 80s, and suppressing all of those birds that could have brought so much joy to a twitcher’s life and yet hypocritically still twitching other people’s birds. So now I have to spend eternity carrying this absurdly heavy Gitzo tripod whilst wandering around reserves photographing Dunnocks at feeding stations, and sharing tiny hides with socially inept men in full camo gear who carry around eleven tons of equipment but don’t even own a pair of binoculars, because that’s what modern birding’s like nowadays because modern birding has all gone to the shit house.”

“You look like such a dick wearing all that camouflage,” Scrooge laughed.

“Don’t knock camouflage,” Marley said, “it’s super cool. How else do you expect a keen photographer to get to within twenty centimetres of a Schedule 1 breeding species that I haven’t got a licence for?”

“You haven’t got a licence?” Scrooge asked,  “and yet you’re photographing seriously endangered British birds at their nest?”

“No I can’t be bothered with a licence, but I just lie and say that I have when I’m quizzed about posting my photos online.”

“Would you care to provide any specific examples of certain images, or even certain photographers, who indulge in this kind of behaviour?”

“Not on here,” Marley replied, “it’s potentially libelous stuff, Scrooge.”

“Look, Jacob, we’ve gone completely off topic. Let’s get back to the proper story, otherwise everyone reading this will just get bored and go to another blog, and then we’ll lose loads of hits and Leica won’t sponsor us and McKinney won’t get the free Ultravids that he’s so desperate for (will do anything for Ultravids). So just do that bit where you take the ribbon off and your jaw drops, then tell me about the three ghosts, and then piss off and let me go to sleep. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow to go out and find some birds to suppress.”

Marley sighed, and then announced: “Ebeneezer Scrooge, you will be visited by three ghosts. Without their visits you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls One.”

To be continued…

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Tagged as: a christmas carol, miserable bastards, suppression, tom mckinney

Article by Tom Mckinney

Tom McKinney has been birding for over 20 years and has birded on every continent, other than the continents he's not yet been to. He is famed for having found Britain's first Gray's Grasshopper Warbler and then waking up and realising it had all been a beautiful, beautiful dream. When not birding he enjoys going to Ladbrokes and writing short biographical entries about himself in a 3rd person voice.

Tom has written 49 awesome articles for us.

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  • http://twitter.com/DawnFine Dawn

    Brilliant! Enjoyed this immensely!

    • Tom McK

      Glad you enjoyed it. Happy Christmas!

  • Mark Brown

    “Legally this may be slanderous rather than libellous as it is in written format rather than spoken.” (Tom Logan, Solicitor)

    • Susie in dictionary corner

      “Libel is defined as defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.”

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