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Bird mistakes Essex for desert
Wednesday 31st October 2012 | Jacob
Arabia, Sahara, Basildon, Whatever.
Essex could be mistaken for any number of other locales. Kent, Norfolk, you name it, they all blur together into a bland sludge, dripping down the back of our east coast. But for all of Essex’s failings, to call it a desert would be a disservice. And worse, geographically inaccurate.
Normally found migrating from Asia to the deserts of the Middle-East at this time of year, the Desert Wheatear hasn’t been seen in Britain since 1987, and with good reason. Like a renegade truck driver, the latest addition to Essex’s wildlife has veered over three thousand miles off course ending its epic journey in a sandpit, perhaps surrounded used birth-control devices and discarded Now! magazines.
A British Trust for Ornithology spokesperson had this to say of the idiot creature: "She will know she's too far north because of the length of our days. She will probably feed up and head off, but it's unlikely she will make it to the desert before winter" Poor little bugger.
It seems sad after coming all this way to escape the desert and sample British culture that the bird would immediately hole up in a sandpit, much like an Essex stag party heading to a beautiful European city only to squander their time and money in a utilitarian Irish Pub.
By Jacob Alexander Guberg.
