This coming weekend marks the start of my new annual two week initiative to give value to the lives of people who feel lost except when the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch is on. Run on very similar lines, it aims to collect scientific data from all across our great country based on the observations of ordinary people just like you on various movement patterns unknown to us and in many cases where there is presumed sadly to be extinction.

For decades, all my close associates in MI5 have pleaded with me to launch this event so that they have a much better view of what is really taking place - or not. Until Covid, I had to say thank you but no. Yet now so much has disappeared from our view does any of us really know whether much is still a part of our own diverse local habitats? So, yes, each year I shall be asking you to see if you can locate ten things. This year's prioritises these.

Try to spot the following:

1. A humble garden snail - and which year did YOU last see one?
2. Any surviving member of Thin Lizzy or The Moody Blues
3. Someone under the age of 85 dressed in winceyette pyjamas
4. Tartan paint, glass nails or a skirtingboard ladder
5, A member of the Shaker religious cult - which doesn't believe in procreation
6. The precise point where seagulls heading towards Trafalgar Square cross in the sky with pigeons heading to Marine Drive, Brighton - is it really Pease Pottage? (People living north of Watford can skip this question and go on to question 7)
7. A ferret down an old bloke's trousers that is drinking a pint of Theakston's from a proper pint glass through his flies (People living south of Goole can skip this question and go on to question 8)
8. A dogging or a fracking site - please provide evidence with a photograph
9. Any Eurasian beaver that is clearly making a positive contribution to flood management defences
10. Sergei or Yulia Skripal.

Good ,luck everybody.

A survey for our times, and beautifully formulated may I say. I haven't spotted any of them yet, but for no.5 I think I might be a Shaker. Hope this helps.

oh and at no.7.

#1 - yesterday on my back wall

Constantly swerving around badger carcasses when I'm out on the bike but I haven't seen a flat hedgehog for years now.

Excellent responses so far - many thanks.

I am also having sightings coming in daily from all my postal wings.

A retired refuse disposal operative and "star" of his local voluntary sector, Hector Boutros-Boutros Batmanghelidjh, CBE, was at home in his grotty shoebox flat on Norbury High Street when he spotted both a pigeon and a seagull in the sky. He writes :

"I could not be sure what they were doing with each other - it was probably something very innocent - but from the direction of the thrusting I am in no doubt at least that the pigeon was heading from London to Brighton. Could it be then that the paths of these creatures don't cross in Sussex at all but rather above the well known ley line conjunction just north of nearby Thornton Heath?"

Elsewhere, Mrs Vera Scroggins of Grimsby took her trowel to her garden in search of a humble garden snail. Though that proved fruitless, what she did dig up with just a few shovels and much to her surprise was Justin Hayward singing Forever Autumn.

Not only that but shortly afterwards the heavens opened and in a mere five minutes she had ten inches of rain. She tells me that her house would have become completely flooded had it not been for a dry moat and ha-ha wall surrounding her entire property. While her memory is vague and she cannot rule out having built both of them herself, she suspects it was in fact the highly constructive work of an active beaver.

And an MP who I shall not name said that while he hadn't seen her for weeks, Yulia Skripal was an ex of his and as far as he was concerned there were only three possible reasons why their relationship was totally celibate :

She prioritised manufacturing Novichok and testing it on herself (B) She was secretly in the very last fragments of the Shaker movement along with many other little known organisations or (C) She simply preferred the illicit thrill of dogging (which he feels may well be why she disappeared as often as she did.).

I think I've spotted 12 and a half of the items on your list Horse, although the snail was homeless hence only a half a point. This is like my i-Spy book of birds, but without the Birdwatch and the points.

Quote: Firkin @ 13th August 2021, 1:03 PM

I think I've spotted 12 and a half of the items on your list Horse, although the snail was homeless hence only a half a point. This is like my i-Spy book of birds, but without the Birdwatch and the points.

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Brilliant - and you win the prize.

Now please send me your address so - I assume that among the 12 and a half is at least 1 and a half of the Skripals - we can find out exactly what did happen in Salisbury.

I have never seen a dead duck (wild not crispy) or a baby pigeon (wild or crispy).

Suburban garden about a mile as the crow flies from farmland. Neighbour has heavily overgrown trees. Normally get regular visits morning and late afternoon to my cheapo Wilko bird feeder station (seeds and fat balls) - Blue Tits, couple of Robins, Sparrows. All seem to nest in the local trees and last year it was mobbed for a while by some Long Tailed Tits. They seemed to prefer feeding en-masse rather than one or two at a time like the other species.

This year I haven't needed to top it up once. Just had Pigeons and Magpies using the water bowl.

Nice couple of posts for which thanks. But I note the emphasis in them is more on versions of birds (ish) than on establishing whether it is Sergei or Yulia who now only has a body from the waist down. I am entirely relaxed about this myself but I am being warned by senior members of the SAS that if their sudden evacuation of staff from Porton Down on 31 August leads to a terrorist incident at an airport, it will be all my fault and I may not be elected again. The note is clear - and they are still all friends of mine - "less the Chris Packham please and more about identifying which citizen in our midst with just feet, legs and genitalia is the spy. Otherwise we will have to trawl through the bleedin' lot of these halfies on every street corner".

Quote: playfull @ 27th August 2021, 12:12 PM

I have never seen a dead duck (wild not crispy) or a baby pigeon (wild or crispy).

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I've seen a baby pigeon. There was a pigeon nest on a ledge opposite a window at work. We watched it growing up.