Tuesday 25th January (Mr. Kite Scores Three Hundred Year Ticks in a Few Hours)

Mr. Kite looked out of his bedroom window to see the pale colours of the housing near the Clifton Suspension Bridge. A robin was singing nearby. Today it was another day of birding. That could be bird watching, listening to birds or just looking and thinking about birds and flight.

Now being in Bristol Mr. Kite went to the Bristol Art Gallery and Museum birding. The warm interior of the museum was a sharp contrast to the chilly wind that blew in the street. Inside the entrance a Jupiter radial engine was on display alongside part of the power plant of a Harrier jump jet that once had the name Kestrel. The lobby had a Bristol Boxkite suspended from the ceiling the first complete flying machine of the day.

Being Bristol Art Gallery and Museum there was a display covering Bristol flying machines and a history of their production and development. It was here that Mr. Kite saw the first bullfinch of the day. Slightly different from those red, black and white species that he normally sees this one can best be described as camouflaged braced parasol monoplane with roundels; being Bristol this was a model Bristol Bullfinch based on a 1922 real machine.

With this ticked off Mr. Kite visited the South-West wing, notice the pun, where wild life from the local area was on display. With an abundance of flora and fauna, whelks, winkles and water lovers Mr. Kite was soon ticking off smew, red-throated loon, fulmar, kittiwake, little auk and common tern to name but a few. But of course these birds were very cooperative as they sat nailed to their perch in the glass display cases. Later a copy of Audubon's great-blue heron was etched on a glass Steuben plate and nearby pictures painted by Edward Bird. Soon after Mr. Kite viewed all the birds, and animals, of the world in Jan Griffier's painting of Noah's Ark depicting the creatures entering the ark two by two.

Having visited every section of the gallery Mr. Kite only had one more gallery to visit; the evolution of the creatures locally including an early bird dinosaur called archaeopteryx. From here Mr. Kite slowly strolled along the remaining gallery to the British Birds where he completed his tick list with a few hundred more birds including swift, swallow, and sand martin.

With the staff in the gallery looking at their watches and putting on their hats and coats Mr. Kite knew that this was not going to be a Night in the Museum so he left the building with his notebook bulging. The last thing to do in Bristol was to make the Space Signpost point at a few planets. Disappointingly the display screen had the common error message 'disk error 394'; insert boot up disk. Mr. Kite only had his notebook and nearly empty pen so he went back to his holiday home to enjoy a tipple of St. Austell's Brewerys Cornish Indian Pale Ale. Cheers to the birds and beer of Bristol.