General Discussion

Copy and pasted from:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1049096/Bill-Oddie-How-I-spent-Seventies-making-lost-time-losing-virginity-spreading-wild-oats.html

I have been keeping bird notebooks - sort of birdy diaries - for more than 50 years. Every now and then, I re-read what I wrote long ago, closing my eyes and re-living the experience all over again.

I am now looking at the first page of the earliest notebook I have. There were others before this. But my documented bird history began on August 15, 1956, when I was 15 and on a golf course by the Exe estuary at Dawlish Warren in Devon.

The text tells the tale of a 'possible Richards Pipit' - a dull but rare bird that bears some resemblance to a skylark (which is not a rare bird).

I tried hard to convince myself that the bird was the aforesaid rare pipit, but I know it wasn't. And how can I be so sure? Because I can still see it. Now.

I only have to close my eyes and I can see the Exe mudflats, and the golf course, and a bunker and some 'rough', and the bird scuttling through the long grass is definitely and undeniably a skylark.