Well I’ve been off half terming (Yay) and also trying to bust out a tiny bit of work while the Squids were otherwise occupied but I’m back now. Anyway I thought I’d tell you our Phantom Raspberry Blower story today.
A few weekends ago we went for a walk in our local forest, we were all wellied up and we decided to go off piste and explore a bit (normally we take the bikes and do a particular track with lots of child friendly distractions) but that day we were going to see what we could see and Littlest wanted to test every puddle for depthness and muddiness, why not said I – that is what wellies are for. So we had a very pleasant time and squelched our way through the trees and up muddy tracks. Littlest needed to be pulled out of several quick sinking patches but that’s about par for the course (that moment when she nearly stepped out of her welly into the mud). Near to the end of our walk as Biggest and I were straggling behind, we heard a strange noise from a tree above us. It sounded like someone blowing raspberries so we stopped and listened, the noise continued and we worked out it was a bird, although we couldn’t see it, and (darn it) not the Phantom Raspberry Blower of old London Town (the Two Ronnies – total legends, if you’ve been living under a rock go directly to youtube, do not pass go, do not collect £200, but do it when you’ve read my blog first.)
Anyway, there we were in the forest and we felt we should raspberry back out of politeness if nothing else, which of course is particularly hilarious if you are 8 years old. The bird, which we couldn’t see joined in and we were raspberry blowing back and forth for quite some time until some other walkers came along and we shuffled off slightly embarrassed to catch up with Dad and Littlest. Well, when we got home later that day we decided to go on the google to try and identify this phantom bird with the cheeky call but we had no luck at all. We listened to several bird calls on youtube but none of them were right. So I pinged off a quick email to the RSPB to ask them. Apart from the odd raspberry blowing bird impression that Biggest felt he needed to do, I forgot about the farty bird until the lovely people at RSPB replied! They reckoned that our phantom raspberry blower was…..wait for it….a Long Tailed Tit, whose call is that of a squelchy raspberry sound and they like foresty trees appaz (big noise from such a small bird!) Biggest and I were rather glad to solve this mystery and now any similar noises heard in our house are said to be that of The Call of the Long Tailed Tit!
