In my youth, I seem to remember, I had the occasional run in with landowners for climbing fences etc. and 'Oi! you buggers get off my land' was part of a normals days birding. At that time I vividly remember dismissing the corrective tones of a middle aged codger with a laugh and, depending on who's company I was with, the odd expletive in reply, but always followed by a gutless sprint to safety. Yesterday things turned full circle when a brief visit to Llantarnam ponds got me shouting 'Oi!' at three teenagers for chucking stones at a coot. As my deep authoritative tones were successfully buffered by the biomass of the Canadian pondweed invaded waterbody and the coot now flapped to safety, 'old git' was clearly audible from one of the youths. Rather than reply with something futile like, 'right I'm calling the Police' or ' I know who you are and I'll be visiting your parents' I chose not to challenge and with a sense of deja vu I turned to chase a latticed heath, preferring to reflect on the positives of three lads enjoying some biodiverse green space - these days a much rarer sight than either the coot or latticed heath.
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