There's No Such Thing As A Gruffulo - Birdfair

The only trouble with only doing Birdfair for two days is as soon as you've "got into it" it's over before you know it.

After yesterday's sweltering heat today was far more bearable. We were up bright and early and on site before half past nine. We wanted to go and see Ruth & Alan from the Biggest Twitch do their talk on the Joys Of Birdwatching. I've never met them before despite being twitter friends for quite some time. It was quite some talk. A real tour de force of the simple joy of going bird watching. Their enthusiasm was infectious. It was a very well attended talk and it was easy to see why. One day we will have reached the point where we can go on one of their bird watching weeks. I can imagine it's quite an event, apparently according to Julian (of RSPB Conwy) there is quite a lot of cake too!

Our next talk was cancelled, which was a shame as it was Johnny Kingdom. Last year was a riot.

We met up with our good friend Bev for a coffee and a catch up, it also  gave us a chance to have a wander around and talk to the people who we missed yesterday. We made it to the RSPB Stand, and had a good chin wag with the aforementioned Julian and Mark Avery wandered over. One of the highlights of the weekend was Mark scoffing at the fact I was too shy to talk to Debbie Pain, who coincidentally ended up sitting on the table next to us at the diner last night.

We completed our round of NGO's I am a member of by visiting the BTO stand and having a chat to Ieuan. I forgot to mention in yesterdays blip that I randomly joined the Butterfly Conservation Organisation when Chris Andrews (of Frampton Marsh) was moonlighting on their stand!

We popped in to see a short talk by Dominic Couzens on the Crossely Bird Guide For The UK. Dawn bought me the book last Christmas. I think it is a wonderful field guide as it is laid out for people like me who are only really beginners at this hobby. There was the usual Couzens twist on things. I particularly liked his description of the standard field guide Linnet drawings. He said it was almost as the illustrator, now completely frustrated at painting all the warblers and using just shades of brown for months, suddenly goes mad with an array of splashes of red when it comes to the Linnet! It is something me and Dawn completely related too, you rarely see bright red Linnets in the wild, most just have a blush on their chest.

We headed back to the Events Marquee for a BirdFair débutante. Martin Hughes-Games from Springwatch was on the stage. It was an excellent talk, with quite a lot of behind the scenes tales. As you can imagine it was packed out. We stayed in the tent for a new BirdFair quiz of Birdless Pointbrain, which was brilliant. It was based on the TV Quiz show Pointless if you hadn't figured that bit out.

The celebs were paired up with BirdFair Volunteers. It came down to a final "beak to beak" round between Nick Baker and Mike Dilger (we had bumped into Mike earlier who was in very fine fettle!). Nick made it to a very tough final round, where they had to find three pointless animals named after Pallas. They failed but it was testament to the 100 volunteers they had put the question too that there were so few pointless answers throughout the quiz!

There was one final event to attend and it was always going to be the highlight of the weekend. A stellar cast was to perform the Gruffulo live in the Events Marquee. We headed over early as it was always going to be mobbed. It was the case of spot the children, but there were a fair few around. They were invited onto the stage as little squirrels.

I chose this picture for the blip for one simple reason. It encapsulates the entire spirit of BirdFair in a single image, a bit like last years Johnny Kingdom one. It is just a blast of a weekend. And on stage you had three generations of birdwatchers.

The whole show was hysterical, with everyone making up lines. Mike Dilger played the Mouse, Nick Baker the Snake, Rob Lambert the Fox and Dominic Couzens the non specific Owl species. The Gruffulo could only be played by the one and only Bill Oddie. The whole thing was given some sense of professionalism by Lucy McRobert, who narrated.

I cannot add any more than the chap who was sat next to us, who said "I have been coming to Birdfair for twenty years and I have never laughed as much as that.."

We had one more stand to visit and that was the Bushnell stand and Wildlife Kate and Tiger Garrett.

It was the perfect way to end a perfect BirdFair. I am already looking forward to August 19th 2016!!

I have added a few more photos in the extras.