Escape from Coaltits

With Snowdrops comes Spring of course, and BBC’s Springwatch. I have watched the programme a few times but there has to be a limit to the times you can watch stags rutting. Springwatch is minus Bill Oddie these days, who according to the news has been unwell with severe depression; perhaps he should never have left the programme. I’m sure he hasn’t abandoned the birdies, though. Years ago my son, armed with camera, entered a hide on a lakeside in Tresco. There was someone already there and when he returned to our hotel it wasn’t the birds he was ecstatic about, it was the fact that he had met Bill Oddie. ‘I’m sure it was him,‘ he said. It had to be him, didn’t it? Nobody could mistake anyone else for Bill Oddie. Besides, he had a timeshare on the island. I asked if they had spoken. ‘He said hello.’ Which isn’t at all bad from a birdwatcher. I’m no twitcher, I wouldn’t be able to keep still and quiet long enough. The few hides I’ve been in, speak one word and they want to kill you.