SPECIAL BULLETIN ONE

From now on, I plan to post Special Bulletins about something that takes my fancy off-grid. Today is about an app I've used constantly since upgrading to Cxxi early in MMXXIV.

When I wake in a quiet place and switch my brain on, I invoke Merlin and plant the phone on the roof while I make the coffee.  While Merlin listens, I leave it to its own devices and come back with my cuppa to see what's been netted.  6am is a favourite as the sun is up but the humans have yet to surface.

I can dub over while Merlin is recording, especially if I hear a bird Merlin has missed.  Humans have selective hearing and ignore an express train going through while a Raven kraaks overhead.   Merlin hears the train but not the Raven.

Thursday at Stretton-Under-Fosse the catch was light: Goldfinch, Robin, Wood Pigeon, Spotted Flycatcher, Jackdaw but sometimes I score high and occasionally catch rarer birds, such as a Stock Dove at Stockton,  a Green Woodpecker at Brownsover,  a Raven near Leamington Spa. repeated over Combe Fields. 

In contrast to Thursday's catch and at the same location two weeks earlier I pulled a total of 19 including Wren, Blue Tit, Robin, Blackcap, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Rook, Goldfinch, Great Tit, Mallard, Carrion Crow, Dunnock, Jackdaw, Song Thrush, Coal Tit, Magpie, Collared Dove, Goldcrest, Linnet, Blackbird.

I don't think I have ever managed to avoid a woodpigeon at a count. They're everywhere. Why is it almost impossible to find them in a fur'n'feather butcher's then?  The web is full of recipes  (this extols how cheap they are) but actually getting the bird or better still the breasts is more difficult in line (queueing at a counter) or on line (cueing with clickstrokes).

"Wild Meat" has woodpigeons 'all the year round' but when you look there are 'none available just now' and 'if you leave your e-mail we will call you'. 
"OrganicButchery" offers four breasts pre-packaged from their freezer but coyly explain they have a minimum order of £50 and the meat may contain shot. 
"Kimbers" say the season is 'over' so their breasts are from the freezer.

Season? The country is aflight with wood pigeons BreedingForEngland and England has a SEASON?  This country needs pulling up if wild food is out there for the taking and you have to have a SEASON for taking it. 

Pigeons  breed all the year round f'gossake and are net damagers of farmland, gardens and crops.  If they were marketed and provided we could all have best game right off the fields all year and get the bloody numbers down to manageable. This morning at newbolt I was up early looking at a big tree just across the way and counted 18 as in eighteen perched there plotting the days divilmint.  That is 36 breasts in all and with three per person that tree would have provided the main dish for a table of twelve if the Wolvercote Supper Club was running and all they needed would be 2kg of Newbold blackberries to make the sauce.