Manny Eslick wished he hadn’t overdone Friday’s cele­bra­tion at the end of a great week in Paris. He had ruined Saturday’s train journey home.

Back in his flat he swore at phone messages urging him into the vaccine lab for some overtime. He would have been thankful for the contribution to his mort­gage repayments but now it soured a romantic spring break.

And romantic it had been. That little café by Sainte Clothilde, so different from the hustle of the cupboard they had booked near Gare du Nord, which was again so different from the cupboard he had bought in Guildford. Both cupboards shared with his girlfriend, so that was OK really.

So, grim-faced, he was carrying a tray full of Perspex flasks, whose conical shape reminded him of Lucy. Her hips and how she had lowered herself on him in that cinema… where was it? Rue Apollinaire or some such. They had been quite alone…

Stop it! Hadn’t a week’s French screwing been enough? He had to concentrate. At his, disposal end of the research lab, care, not speed, was everything. Elsewhere alacrity was of the essence to get the right vaccine for the right disease at the right time. All Manny had to do was get shot of the waste.

His head… he began to wonder if the alcohol were solely responsible. Previous hangovers had generally improved as the day had worn on but this one was deteriorating.

In his distraction Manny tripped and the flasks tottered and swayed. One surrendered to gravity and plummeted. It bounced on the floor, bounced again, then came to a rolling equilibrium. Side to side, side to side. Manny had not been quick enough to catch it but he was fast in scooping up and replacing it on the tray.

Shit. He should report it but the flask didn’t appear damaged and it was only low-grade waste. He returned to concentrating on the job of delivering his payload to the incinerator.

As usual, security waved him through without bothering to check the flasks. It was only on Manny’s return trip that one of the officers mentioned the damp patch on Manny’s boilersuit.

Double shit. Now he would have to report the incident. But first, he was feeling so ghastly that a trip to the toilet was urgent. It had been a few years since he’d resorted to vomiting out a hangover. His girlfriend had cured him of that.

Manny retched so miserably that he forgot the ruptured flask and his only thought was of signing off sick. He shrugged out of his coverall and dumped it none too carefully with the other dirties. Then on with his civvies and a retreat to his sickbed.

It would be a full week before the Incident Investigation Team would interview the security officer. He would remember the damp suit and so would come to light a hairline tear in the, by then, perfectly dry garment.

Twenty months since my last lifer and six since my last British species, this one was a corker. Perched openly in a tree with its long black-bordered plumes, the heron put me in mind of Rod Stewart. (Did I ever tell you my Rod Stewart story?…)

So what’s a squacco heron doing in Somerset? And what does squacco mean? The bird is a Mediterranean migrant from Africa so this one has overshot. The Bay of Biscay looks to be the most northerly colony. The species is in the same Ardeola genus as Chinese pond heron, which I saw in Singapore. That puts it before the cattle egrets and true herons, and after North America’s green heron.

Squacco seems to come from the Italian name for the bird. Some chap called Francis Willughby coined it but, more important, got the serious taxonomy ball rolling in the process. Ball rolling is an apt metaphor because he also gave an early description of the game of football. And with no end to the trivia he was born at Middleton Hall, now an RSPB reserve.

Betcha you’re glad you learned that.

Chew Valley was quieter but Herriotts held a splendid drake garganey, a couple of shovelers and still a goldeneye. I completed the three reservoirs at Barrow Gurney, where I first heard sand martins then, with delight, found their nesting bank. I have a dim memory of hearing about this. It’s artificial of course but makes the yomp round both tanks worthwhile in the summer.

So a fine day out after recent incarceration to get new versions of Let the Time Come and The Honeyeaters’ Tree to the printers. Still working on ‘em though…

Away from Santa Clara County on April 22:

“Large straggly flocks flying north close to the water were Brent geese. There were also birds very high and in some kind of strung out formation. They may have been Brents but I have seen cormorants like this – although not in their hundreds as these flocks numbered.

“Other groups had about a dozen per flock, flew close to the water and looked like divers. I fancied red-throated from a slight drooping of the heads. Large straggly flocks of smaller birds completed the procession – scoters?

“None of these was really close enough to get any more than an impression of their general colour scheme. The sun was also coming round to behind them to make matters more difficult.

“Ideas, anyone? In any case it was certainly a sight worth seeing.”

They’ve been slow coming through Portishead – non-existent bar Portbury Wharf – but I’ve managed to notch a couple of early dates in the last week. The first was swifts over Barrow Gurney on the 26th. That wasn’t the intention: I was on my way to Chew Valley for black terns, which didn’t show. Still, swifts were also out in force there.

Not much else though. A day later swifts were again a story by Dowlais Farm, south of Clevedon. Again they weren’t the target; whimbrel were and they didn’t disappoint. A couple picked their way along the muddy shore. The coast was also dripping with wheatears, a few yellow wagtails flew over and a lesser whitethroat flitted through a hedgerow. It’s not often I log that before common whitethroat although one of those did pop up a few minutes later.

Then the weather kicked in and put an end to the month’s birding. Next up may be spotted flycatcher. That’s way more probable than nightingale unless I try Wetmoor again. As for Arctic tern or any sort of skua… Saints are more likely to win the Premiership.

Oh, didn’t I mention their promotion?

“The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats” with the emphasis on survival. “Global society will live or die as a high-energy enterprise” in the closing hopeful (i.e. hope in the sense of someone else will sort it out) chapter drives home where Gwynne Dyer is coming from. Business as usual, with technology (or innovation) patching up the damage, will somehow deliver the same energy punch as cheap oil.

It’s doubtful that any of coal, hydro, wind, sun, biofuel, geothermal (fill in the latest fad here) will suffice. Even the combination of all the above is unlikely to cut it. Our high-energy days are surely numbered and whisper it not that billions of the walking dead may truly have to die as this input falters.

And say that it doesn’t falter. That it continues to drive our unsustainable lifestyle further down the road of climate change, soil depletion, water drawdown and species extinction.

However, Climate Wars is what it says on the tin. So let’s judge the book on its cover and ignore the Unholy Trinity of Bottlenecks – oil, soil and water. Even so, the book’s message is that we’re fucked if we’re relying on politicians, government or the free market. It paints several grim pictures of industrial civilisation imploding.

None of this will be new to forward thinkers. New to me in the penultimate chapter was Canfield Oceans. The first of these existed some billion or two years ago as an oxygen-free sea. Then oxygen got going and that should have been that for the Canfield Ocean.

But they seemed to crop up again and again coincident with most mass extinctions. And the mechanism that caused their return was… global warming. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. They spewed toxic hydrogen sulphide into the atmosphere, much as volcanoes do, but by orders of magnitude more.

The good news is that one isn’t about to happen any time soon. Dyer oddly claims that it’s our only extinction threat. Industry’s wholesale destruction of nature, i.e. our support system, springs to mind as just one other candidate.

A compelling read and well written, Climate Wars is a fine addition to the futurology canon. Just remember to factor in the missing roadblocks.

Pastoral myth it may be but the circumstantial evidence is too strong to deny it. To whit: today on my way along the A369 to Bristol (for How to Survive the Future, which is a whole post by itself) I passed two badger corpses. This is a stretch of road that has seen none in the two-and-a-bit years I’ve been travelling it. What sort of coincidence is that?

The sort explained by a farmer killing the badgers and dumping the bodies to make them look like road victims. And of course the clean-up crews remove the remains no questions asked, also complicit in civilisation‘s slaughter of the creatures.

A farmer surely wouldn’t be so stupid as to have the corpses so close together? Why not when no-one’s going to give them a second thought. Why not even if they look remarkably healthy compared to the squished and bloody messes one sees of roadside foxes, hedgehogs and pheasants.

Just in case you still think it may be coincidence, consider the four dead badgers I saw within ten miles between Frome and Warminster on my last trip east to Sussex. The same phenomenon; the same lack of mess; the same coincidence?

So, why cull when you can kill through the back door?

Good? Of course it’s good in the same way as the millions of birds that have today died from humanity’s war on them.

This is like a lifer for me. I have one dodgy heard-only record from Rutland Water in 1999 but today’s bird by the South Hide, although still not seen, was unambiguous – a noise I can’t recall hearing before. It was more strident than I’d expected. A whopper of a grasshopper would be needed for that volume – bigger than we get in this country anyway.

True to form I was about to give up when the bird called. The morning had been good all the same with redstarts, one peregrine powering over and a brief glimpse of a barn owl, which alone would have made the day. One greylag goose was new for the reserve, as of course was the gropper. A singing garden warbler made it a hat-trick.

That took a few moments to identify but when it sank in, I realised that I’d heard one at Ham Wall on Friday. There’s a trick to separating it from blackcap that the field guides don’t tell you about. Yes, the song is quieter and more complex but I think the clincher is when you can’t decide whether you’re listening to a blackcap, song thrush or sedge warbler. The species manages to whistle through the repertoire of all these birds.

Swallows aplenty, a handful of sand martins and my year’s first house martin completed the roster for the visit.

Now the bad news. The monstrosity in the top picture is a new bridge that connects Port Marine to the Wharf. Behind it are a few of the extra houses that have sprung up in my time here. The bridge has been threatened a while and one had grown complacent that it wouldn’t happen. Now here it is. I’ve largely stopped going to the reserve because it’s already overrun with fucking dogs. Now the floodgates will truly open.

Just as bad will be the onslaught of people. The second picture shows the state of the middle hide when I got there – every single window and door open. The same was true for the tower hide. No log books in either; benches missing from the latter. We can expect worse.

And it’s certainly the end for the wildlife value of the site.

The two long-billed dowitchers were also still present, one sporting the reddish wash of breeding plumage so they may be off soon. The usual black-tailed godwits, one ringed plover and a marsh harrier completed the species of note.

A few swallows were in and Ham Wall, over the road, gave me the electric chatter of a sand martin. Migrants are trickling in but a trickle is what it seems to be this year. Two reed warblers also chuntered away and it’s unusual to get them before sedge warblers, of which there were none.

So, what’s up next? Cuckoo, tree pipit and wood warbler, according to my records. May have to try the Quantocks for those tomorrow. But right now… it’s the small matter of Saints at home to Reading for the Championship title, methinks.

This species is fast becoming a Somerset speciality. Indeed that’s the only British county where I’ve seen it – first at Chew Valley in 2009, then a pair last year at Blagdon and Chew (again). And the two birds down at the Somerset Levels last Tuesday were highly likely this latter pair. They’ve been on their travels though, to the South Coast and back.

So have I. Since Widewater, I returned from a long weekend with the brothers at Steyning via Selsey Bill, which was quiet apart from the year’s first red-breasted mergansers. I tried without success for the hawfinches at Eastleigh, close to Winchester, before a yomp through Denny Wood in the New Forest in the hope of woodlarks. No joy with them either.

That was all Monday, with an overnight stop in Bournemouth so that I could hit seabirds and migrants the next morning at Portland Bill. Plenty of gannets, guillemots, fulmars, wheatears, a shag and one swallow. It’s summer! Then it was a haul up to Shapwick, which also had a marsh harrier, five ruff, booming bitterns and squealing water rails.

112 species for the month – not bad.