A lot of Greenshank activity in the Green Mile. Seen this film too many times, but never noticed the greenshanks before ... Practically every outdoor scene: prison yard, warden's home. .. Greenshank, greenshanks everywhere!
Sunday night on BBC 2 showed a 2013 film "The Lone Ranger" with Johnny Depp as Tonto, - a bit of a spoof, and not to be taken too seriously. One scene depicted the famous duo buried by the Comanches in desert sand up to their necks in the face of an imminent stampede, which they miraculously survived to the disappointment of the vultures standing around nearby.
You may well expect that these could only have been Turkey Vultures or new world Black Vultures; but no..... they were old world gyps sp. - probably Griffons, indicating that the scene was filmed probably in Spain.
Was the director ignorant, or worse still, did they just assume the bulk of their viewing audience would be?
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Last night was watching CSI on channel 5 (series 11, episode 1), and the bird songs appear to have been dubbed for British/European viewers as I could definitely hear singing Willow Warbler and Song Thrush. Not what you expect to hear in Las Vegas!
You don't call anything Yankee 'yellow-bellied', unless you want a few tanks driving down your main street.
Anyway, if it wasn't a y-b fly, what was it. I don't know if you've seen the BTO release about last years Cornwall alder/willow/whatever flycatcher. Who's to say what anything in that family might be based on what they say (the bits I can understand!!).
Page 4 in the Daily Express today carried the story of Blakeney Point's Yellow-bellied Flycatcher that wasn't.
In fairness, the initial report of a "probable" YBF led them astray, so I for one don't judge the paper too harshly in this instance, though I do smile sympathetically (through slightly gritted teeth) at the writer's attempt at a rudimentary plumage description:
..." The flycatchers (empidonax flaviventris) are olive-green on top and have yellow tummies."
Awwhhh! Isn't that sweet?
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Challenges are inevitable, but failure is optional.
I remember well him arriving in Scilly with his crew and getting across to StAgnes and seeing a Wood Thrush - everyone else was marooned on St Mary's due to the weather!
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Judith Smith
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Lightshaw hall Flash is sacrosanct - NO paths please!
The Times is a goldmine for furnishing birdy stories with the wrong photo. Only last year they ran a story about the upturn in bittern fortunes in England with the photo of a sunbittern alongside. Classic that. And only a couple of weeks ago Simon Barnes was eulogizing about Kestrels he'd been watching near his Suffolk home. However the photo editor must have thought he had been in the USA at the time (you're ahead of me here, I can tell), because there was an American kestrel to illustrate the article.
On a totally different front. Do you remember when Tony Soper was the bees-knees of birding? He had a weekly series doing roughly what Bill Oddie did a decade or so later. On one show he was off to the Scillies in autumn which the programme announcer in his best BBC voice informed us was to search for a 'mega-stick' (sic). They were so amateur in their approach to nature then unlike the serious approach now adopted by Chris Packham and Co.
Reminds me of The Bolton News reporting the Peregrines when they first nested on the town hall clock. The first report said they were "Kestrels" and printed a picture of a Lesser Kestrel. A couple of weeks later they had a front page spread saying they were Peregrines, with a lovely picture of some kind of Lanner/Saker falcon.
Then a couple of weeks ago someone had sent in a picture of a raptor taken in Horwich,which they printed on the letters page. They credited the photographer on a great shot of a Kestrel. The writer then went on to tell us how distinctive Kestrels are and easily recognised by their distinctive hunting method of hovering. Great research you might think. Unfortunately they failed to notice the photo was of a Peregrine
Ha. Class. This is so typical of the media. Sometimes I think they just google what theyre looking for and re-jig the text on the first link they find. In the case of the bird sounds/harris hawk it was probably the first image or something.
They do it with everything these days, birds/wildlife/ sports and everything inbetween and it really winds me up (I can forgive it to an extent in the films but not the supposed 'factual' reporting). I was watching some news the other night when the 'reporter' started prattling on about something wildlife related and they were just so wrong it was untrue. My missus suggested I let off steam by complaining. I didnt but should have.
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Closer to home recently, there was a series on UK television, I think it was the one about the Tudors (Henry V111 to be precise),............. Doubtless the producers spent many thousands of pounds on the authenticity of costumes etc. but thought that any old raptor would "do" for the requirements of that scene, and a Harris's Hawk, being a popular falconry bird in the 21st century, was shoehorned in on the cheap.
Sadly, Mike, there's as much care and attention to detail in the costumes as there is in the falconry
I and the family watched a film this evening, - "Blood Diamond", featuring Leonardo Di Caprio and set in Sierra Leone against the background of the civil war of the 90's.
About 2/3rds of the way through the film, (in all other respects so far quite convincing) we get to some tense jungle scenes, and what do we hear in the background to add that flavour of a REAL JUNGLE atmosphere? You guessed it; - the unmistakable and far carrying evocative sound of a Screaming Piha calling. - Incredible what carrying power the voice of that species has! Just imagine being able to hear the calls of a South American endemic from all the way across the other side of the Atlantic in West Africa! It's been a regular feature in many jungle films over the years. I think I've heard it in feature films about Vietnam and other places in the far east. It's become so established that film makers now seem to think the Screaming Piha's calls are the quintessential jungle background sound for all jungles everywhere, the world over.
Closer to home recently, there was a series on UK television, I think it was the one about the Tudors (Henry V111 to be precise), and in one of the hunting scenes the king's falconer (or was it Henry himself) had on his arm not a noble Peregrine but a Harris's Hawk, which would have been quite a minor miracle in 1512, when I would lay odds none would yet have appeared in Europe for many years to come. Doubtless the producers spent many thousands of pounds on the authenticity of costumes etc. but thought that any old raptor would "do" for the requirements of that scene, and a Harris's Hawk, being a popular falconry bird in the 21st century, was shoehorned in on the cheap.
More recently, last October's Eastern Crowned Warbler in Trow Quarry was referred to in one of the tabloids not as "feeding" or "flitting about" in the trees, but nonsensically as "nesting "in them.
I must stop here or I might drift into other areas of media incompetence quite divorced from matters birdy, (such as the systematic assassination of English grammar by radio and TV commentators).
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