Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book Quotes

“Another impressive postscript which you can tag on to a description is: ‘Observer familiar with the species’ (this is supposed to denote that you’ve seen one before, either in this country or abroad and so can be reliably expected to recognise it again) but it isn’t infallible – the record may well come back with a reject slip marked: ‘Committee familiar with the observer’!”
― Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book

“A nice piece of one-upmanship is to festoon your bins with rings – bird rings that is, not diamond rings or earrings (I think that would be considered dude). The rings are supposed to have come from corpses of rare birds found along the tide line, but if necessary, you can nick them from bird observatory ringing rooms – but you really shouldn’t.”
― Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book