chrisjpainter

Is that an admission that you didn't watch the game?

Did you watch France vs England?

LLLLLLLET'S GET READY TO GRUMBLLLLLLLLLE

Yoink. I'll be 'aving this. Good recipe

One thing to watch out for! The Collins guide above is significantly different to the BTO Collins guide! I have both and find the latter onerously complicated at times. Take wheel of expectation for example: It represents the likelihood of seeing a particular bird throughout the calendar. More red = more likely. But then the number in the middle is the percentage of times the bird is likely to be seen on a birding trip to go and watch the bird. Then the maps aren't just done by colours for all year, summer winter and passage. They're done with a complex sliding scale of colours and is not the clearest, although it is taken directly from scientific data of records, so it's accurate if not overly helpful! It's more aimed at the slightly geeky birder/ornithologist, but I'd say I am one of those and I really don't like it! That said, it's not bad - for a photo ID guide

It says something about his loyalty, doesn't it?! He's an Arsenal fan!

Yeah. Within the next 18 months or not at all. Usyk will be a barometer. If Joshua can beat Usyk, then he has a chance. If not, then it's not worth it.

I think right now Joshua's only strategy would have to be to try and walk through the jab and go for haymaker after haymaker. If he can land a few big shots early it could give Tyson something to think about. But he'd need to do it for round after round. What he needs is to learn how to move defensively. He can't match Fury for offensive movement, but if he can shift his feet more and sway intelligently to make Fury miss his big shots, that's tiring for a big man, because you're constantly having to reign in the missed punch to stop yourself over balancing. A long shot though. I think Fury would have beaten any of the older generation. Training and diet play a huge part in conditioning and that's moved on so much since Ali and Foreman were in the ring. And he'd have beaten Mike Tyson and Holyfield, because he moves so well. Lennox Lewis? Now that's a question!

Red Breasted Merganser. That's the male there

The chiffchaff was once just a chiffchaff. Now it's been split into a common chiffchaff, an Iberian chiffchaff, a Siberian chiffchaff, a Canary Islands chiffchaff etc. Same with the Caspian gull and the Yellow-Legged Gull. Old guides won't have any of the three commonly seen egrets in this country as a UK bird, nor rarities like the glossy Ibis, and I wonder what the distribution information would say about the red kite's population in England? Things have moved on.

Two things. One, they're out of date. Species have changed and split, species for the UK are different now and population maps are very different. Secondly on the eggs front. As egg collecting is now illegal and was such a huge problem, particularly for rare birds of prey, such guides aren't easy to get hold of for the mass market these days. They're still available for the scientific market, but the days of the general public disturbing nests to get a look at eggs are gone.

Joshua's just not delivered on his promise he showed in his early big fights. He's fast approaching the camp of all talk but no action. He has to defeat Usyk and really beat him up to prove he could still warrant a Fury match up

I agree, although it's nice to have all of Europe. It is certainly not a concise book, but if you're going for a bird watching day, then I reckon it's worth having a decent book with you. and if it's to live in the car or on a shelf it doesn't matter if it's not the lightest. It's surprising how quickly a pocket guide can run out of species. All it takes is for something like a glossy ibis to show up - rare, but not THAT rare here in the south - and the RSPB guide draws a blank.

Oh...just don't get the RSPB ones with drawings. The colours are pretty useless in a fair few of them!

The Collins Bird Guide is just about the best in the business. I have a shed load of ID guides lying around, but the most battered, thumbed, rain-soaked and all round mistreated one is the Collins. The drawings are first rate and show multiple morphs and phases to help and where there are potential confusion species, they put in diagrams to aid splitting (in the boxes on the second pic). Great maps and descriptions. The debate over photographs vs pictures will rumble on, but I prefer drawings because they take out any issues with variations in light making birds' colour look different. Also you get a consensus bird to work from; if a photographed bird has a slight colour aberration, then it's not necessarily immediately clear that that's what it is, rather than standard plumage. And when it comes to birds like buzzards, morphology is so diverse you couldn't necessarily hope to photograph them all well, so drawings take care of that too.

It looked inevitable after the first three. There didn't seem to be a gameplan that would work for Whyte; Fury's just too good.

I think it is mandatory, although as I said, Whyte's been mucked about a bit by the federations. This fight went under the radar because it nearly got called off with a cash offer to Joshua to let Usyk fight Fury (Whyte wasn't given a say). Then Whyte refused to show up to all but the last press conference and what bad blood there apparently was between them has diffused over the recent history and they were all very amicable come that final meet. Here we go...

Whyte's probably the fourth best heavyweight in the world right now. He's been given the runaround by the boxing federations and definitely deserved an earlier title shot than this one. I think he's beaten everyone on the circuit except the big three of Fury, Joshua and Wilder. He shook Joshua in their fight, but couldn't finish him. He's got a puncher's chance, but has a bit of skill there too. I am pretty sure this is Fury's fight, but there's always that nagging doubt...

Ah I'd love to and a few people on the lake do, but the tricky thing is only a roll cast would work because there's no room for a back cast behind with trees and steep banks. I've never really learned to fly fish well, so it'd be a tricky thing to learn!

One of my local venues is a 10 minute walk from my house. It's an idyllic 1 acre lake actually owned by the club and set in woodland. There's a good head of carp, as well as some lovely bream and a shed load of tench. On Thursday I had a deadline alas. I was off work so my job was to get the house and car ready for our Easter trip up to Reading. I reckoned I could get all the housework stuff and packing done and then reward myself with a couple of hours fishing. I then decided to reward myself first and worry about packing later. I rocked up to see fish cruising near the top and wondered whether, despite the water being really chilly, they'd take off the surface. I always have a few dog biscuits with me, so rigged up a lob-and-leave feeder rod on an alarm for...anything that turned up, whilst I targeted the fish cruising up and down the rope that anchors the aerator. The set up was dead simple: dog biscuit on a hook, tiny controller, 1.75lb test curve rod and a fixed spool reel loaded with 12lb line. A few missed bites showed they were prepared to have a go at them - a couple of times I struck so hard I sent the rig clean out of the water and straight into the bushes behind me: I was out of practice having spent too long chasing pike with jerkbaits! After an hour or so I got the first clean take I could hit and was rewarded with a fish of 16lb on the dot, 8oz short of my best off the surface. The carp are absolutely stunning, particularly the commons. I let the swim calm down and recast my feeder and stared at a float for a bit, both to no avail. Soon the carp returned. They seem to enjoy picking off the bits of food that get caught on the aerator rope. They were spooking easily, but happily I could cast a few metres away, then used the wind to drift the bait into the rope, mending the line to prevent it overtaking the bait on the drift, almost like trotting a stick float on the river. A few casts later and another carp came up and slurped my biscuit. A longer fish, but only 8lb 2oz I returned to wasting sweetcorn and pellets over the feeder and float mark, and was acutely aware of my rapidly diminishing biscuit supply. And rationed my feed. The carp returned to the rope and I had a couple more chances. One produced a 7lb fish, the other I hooked and lost, and that was all she wrote. Three fish on the surface on a mid-April morning was quite a surprise. I think if I'd not rationed the biscuits and tried to get them really feeding, I could have picked up another fish, but it's hardly a complaint worth making! As a surprising note, I've found a dog biscuit the ducks refuse to eat! several times they saw the loose ones and turned their bills up at them. Great session and I even managed to pack the car and clean the house in time!

I kayak fish - and I actually mean kayak, not these glorified pedalos that are Hobies . It's a bit of a minefield to start. But the basic rule of thumb is your budget is half kayak, half everything else - and a good amount of the everything else should be making sure you're safe. PFD, suitable clothing (wetsuit minimum, drysuit ideally) and radio (plus completed course and licence) as well as paddle leash, safety knife; compass. When it comes to buying a kayak, there really isn't a lot to go wrong with the decent brands, so second hand is the way to go. fishing yak prices fall off a cliff initially, but then retain a reasonable second hand value, so it makes a lot of sense to buy second hand - so long as you buy sensibly! Ocean Kayak, Wilderness Systems, Perception all make excellent plastic kayaks, but the best of the best is Viking (I'm not biased...really I'm not. I'm a little bit biased.). My assumptions is this'll be used in the sea? In which case 13ft is a realistic minimum. Length helps keep a kayak paddling straight. It's both energy efficient for paddling, but also really important in helping you not turning broadside and flipping you in swell, surf or wake. Have you ever kayaked before?

Was that not the obligatory HEEEEAAAAAVVVVVVVVE for a maul, which comes out more like a low moan? I don't think it was booing. It was pretty loud and seemed to be a home fan noise. I can't think why England fans would be booing England's awesome ability to control a maul for that long

I missed the booing; when was that? Part of what makes England so dangerous was the all round adaptability of their players. When you've got locks and flankers who run the wings and split defences like Packer, Ward and Matthews can as well put in the heavy maul work, you know you're onto a good thing. Abbie Dow's injury sounded a sickener. You could hear her crying in pain when it happened. The World Cup's in October; let's hope for a speedy recovery.

If you're looking for competitiveness, definitely! But If you're after that, then you're only left with watching England once all tournament! Aside from France, every match for the Red Roses is a pointless affair. It's not can you win, it's how much can you win by. 131 points from 2 games will inevitably produce the odd moment of magic worth watching live

And this a much changed team from battering Scotland. The strength in depth of England is frightening at the moment. I caught a bit of France vs Ireland too. France look good. We'll have to be at our best when we play them, but we're racking up the points!