So why the Shat Birder?

I got a bit of stick for calling my blog The Shat Birder and contrary to the jibes it is not a description! Shat is actually (believe it or not) the local name for the village in which I have lived all my life, Skelmanthorpe.
Skelmanthorpe is on the outskirts of Huddersfield and in the 1870’s during the construction of the railway line (which is now Kirklees Light Railway), local unskilled labourers were drafted in to chip away at the rock that would later carve out Shelley Tunnel. These local lads were nicknamed stone “Shatterers” by the Irish navvies who had been employed to lay the line. The taunting from these “foreigners” actually ended in a 200 man mass brawl, which saw one of the Irish workers getting part of his ear bitten off! It was this incident that coined the phrase “Shat lug oyl biter” which when translated from broad Yorkshire is basically “Skelmanthorpe Ear Hole Nibbler”. Since then though, nearly 140 years on, Skelmanthorpe is still known as Shat! And all its inhabitants by the abbreviated “Shatters”!

Thursday 2 December 2010

A Bit of Huddersfield Scenery

These are just a few locations around the Huddersfield area, taken over the last few days. I did a lap of Langsett Reservoir on Sunday in the hope of tracking down a Great Grey Shrike that had been reported, no luck on that front but to be fair it's one of my favourite places locally, so it was by no means a 'dip'. It was nice just to be out there in glorious sunshine, albeit with a very chilly breeze! There are a few felled areas now which look perfect for the shrike, the largest area though isn't viewable from the path so it could have been lurking anywhere, if it was even still present? These picture may be better clicked on to enlarge them slightly?

Langsett Reservoir











Red Grouse



Castle Hill with a distant Holme Moss





A view down to Bretton Lakes



The view from the garden - now you see it!





Now you don't!

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3 comments:

  1. Made In HuddersfieldSaturday, June 29, 2013

    Hello. Great pictures. I hope you don't mind but I have uploaded 3 of them onto our new website for a Huddersfield Scenery gallery. We have acknowledged that these images came from your website but if you have any problems, please get in touch with us. Thank you!
    P.S. Our website hasn't launched yet, but will have in July.

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  2. NaturalistWednesday, July 20, 2016

    You may be interest in this about local bird occurences:

    https://undergroundhistories.wordpress.com/birds-of-the-huddersfield-area-a-historical-survey/

    ReplyDelete

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