Dear Mr Key, writes Tzipi Blankette, again, Thank you very much for the helpful information about the little stint. I now wish to raise a completely unrelated matter. I read with great interest your piece on the feeding of a pigtape, and I find myself in something of a quandary. I would very much like to obtain a pet pigtape for my tiny infant, Bathsheba, but I have been told in no uncertain terms by a number of religious and spiritual authorities that she does not have a soul. One particularly forbidding Jesuit announced, in a booming voice, that little Bathsheba is the spawn of the devil. Apparently, it is rare for a baby to be born with vivid markings resembling the number 666 emblazoned atop their skull. Now she is some six years of age, her hair has grown and the markings are no longer visible, but Father Tonguelash S.J. says this makes no difference.

Spawn of the devil or no, it does seem to be the case that Bathsheba is soulless, for her innards have been examined with probes, plungers, x-ray scanners, and geothermal imaging systems, and in among all the bones and veins and tissue and sinew and liver and lights etcetera there is indeed no sign of anything resembling a soul, which as we know is about the size and shape and colour of a plum tomato, though intangible and shimmering and glorious and immortal in a way that a plum tomato is not. That being so, Bathsheba has no suitable home in which a pigtape might nest, but I so want her to have one, especially now she is going to kindergarten. You know what children are like, and I fear she will be teased mercilessly.

Please let me know if there is any advice you can give a poor addled parent at this difficult time. Yours even more sincerely than yesterday, Tzipi Blankette.

Well, Tzipi, I suggest you ignore the Jesuits and just go ahead and buy a pigtape for your daughter. Most townlets have a pigtape supplier, usually located down one of the less salubrious alleyways near the railway station. Pigtapes may need a few days to acclimatise themselves to their new environment. Set aside a small nook or cranny in your home to settle the pigtape in, and before bringing it home lay out plenty of newspaper and throw the windows open. Place in the nook a small box or carton, lined with a scrap of fabric taken from a piece of clothing worn by its new owner, in this case Bathsheba. Some wool from one of her bonnets would be ideal. To help the pigtape get used to its new surroundings, avoid making loud noises or sudden movements in the vicinity of the carton. When it has had a few days to adjust, you can introduce it to Bathsheba gently, for two or three minutes at a time. If she is clutching in her little fist a leaf of lettuce, a radish, or some breadcrumbs, all the better. It is also a good idea to put out a saucer in which you can pour the dregs from a can of Squelcho!, but make sure Bathsheba doesn’t lap this up herself. After a few days, or weeks, or months, or in some cases even years, the pigtape will be thoroughly at home, and will creep, grunting, to its permanent nest, or sty, when you are not looking.

NOTE : Mr Key wishes to thank Miss Dimity Cashew for her help with pigtape advice.

Dear Mr Key, writes Tzipi Blankette, I recently stumbled upon your Hooting Yard website and so enthralling did I find it that, using clever speed-reading techniques, I have read the entire contents, dating back to 2003, in a matter of hours. What has particularly impressed me is your tremendous erudition on the subject of birds. I have always been interested in ornithology, passionately so, but my knowledge of the subject is scant and flimsy. I can honestly say I have learned more through speed-reading your work than from any other birdy source at which I have supped, to put it poetically. Yes, Mr Key, I confess I am something of a poet. The reason I am being so bold as to write to you is that I am currently working on a sonnet sequence about little stints. I know almost nothing of the little stint, but I read carefully your postage yesterday, where you gave, in a footnote, an explanation of the term “unstinting”. I would be enormously grateful if you could expand upon this, and perhaps share with a poor Plathian versifier your boundless knowledge of this tiny wading bird. Yours sincerely, Tzipi Blankette.

I often receive letters from bird-ignorant readers in awe of my avian learning. Usually, I cast them straight into the pneumatic waste chute, because, quite frankly, if I replied to them all I would never get any other work done, and our feathered friends are just one teensy weensy fragment among my many and varied interests, which also include the Kennedy Assassination, the Hindenburg Disaster, eggs and bees, to name but four.

It so happened, however, that Ms Blankette’s letter plopped through the letterbox just as I was putting the finishing touches to my new book, Crush Your Business Rivals By Unleashing Your Inner Little Stint. This is the first in a series of management guides for top CEOs which I hope will be bestsellers in the burgeoning market for management guides for top CEOs. Unfortunately for Ms Blankette, however, I have already signed a contract with a global publishing concern specialising in management guides for top CEOs, under the terms of which I am unable to reproduce any of the text on this website. The book itself will contain ninety-nine percent of my knowledge of the little stint, so all I am able to do here to help out the fledgling poetess is to cobble together a few dribs and drabs that didn’t quite make it into my manuscript.

Under no circumstances must you confuse the little stint with Temminck’s stint. Try to remember the wise old rustic saying “When it comes to stints, there are two words / The little and Temminck are different birds”. Having said that, matters are confused further by the fact that not only are there two words for the two different stints, but there are dozens of other words for the little stint itself, depending on where you are in the world. For example, you will be making a basic error if, in some other, alien, distant land, out on a bird-spotting expedition with your pals Lars and Prudence, you point your finger and shout “Look, Lars and Prudence, a little stint!” What you ought to shout, assuming you know where you are, is “Look, Lars and Prudence, a – “ followed by one of the following terms: jespák malý, Zwergstrandläufer, Dværgryle, Correlimos Menudo, pikkusirri, Bécasseau minute, Veimiltíta, Gambecchio comune, nishitounen, Kleine Strandloper, Dvergsnipe, biegus malutki, Pilrito-pequeno, Combatente, pobrežník malý, Småsnäppa, Mazaricu Nanu, Sərçəvari qumluq cüllütü, Ar sourouc’han bihan, Corriol menut, Redonell, Territ menut, Pibydd bach, Pibydd lleiaf, Premavera, malgranda kalidro, Playerito menudo, Väikerisla, väikerüdi, Txirri txikia, Dvørggrælingur, Gobadáinín Beag, Looyran beg, Žalar ciganin, Apró partfutó, Chnchghuk Kttsar, Youroppa-tounen, Stynt munys, Calidris minuta, Ereunetes minutus, Erolia minuta, Mažasis bėgikas, Trulītis, Rivarel nanin, Kulik-vorobey, Uhcacovzoš, mali prodnik, Gjelaci i vogël, blataric patuljak, Tsititsiti-nyenyane, Chokowe Mdogo, Küçük kumkuşu, Dẽ nhỏ, or Rẽ nhỏ.

I would think that list provides Tzipi Blankette with plenty of words for her sonnet sequence, which I hope I get a chance to read before it is shoved away into a desk drawer and left to gather unto itself the dust of neglect.

A life-size marzipan wolf makes a splendid teatime treat at gatherings of the extended family. For smaller kinship grouplets, it can be portioned up and served piecemeal after supper over several days, or even weeks, depending on the portion sizes.

The first thing to do is to commandeer the kitchen, together with any adjacent pantries, larders and icehouses. If you employ skivvies, drive them out, with a broom if necessary. They can busy themselves awhile in an outbuilding or annexe, or you can just dismiss them, with or without character references. Bear in mind, however, that when you have finished making your life-size marzipan wolf you will probably want the skivvies back in the kitchen, toiling through all the hours God sends, so whatever you decide to do, treat them with kindness, or at least what passes for kindness in your bleak forbidding grim authoritarian household.

Next, acquire a large glob of marzipan. It should be at least the size, if not the shape, of an average adult wolf. If you are not sure what that is, make study of wolves, for example by combing through reference books, preferably illustrated, by watching informative documentary films at the local fleapit, or by stalking the heaths and moors at dead of night. Remember that in moonlight it can be difficult to judge distance, so get as close to any pack of heath or moorland wolves as you possibly can. Wear dark clothing and night-vision goggles, if they are available in your neck of the woods.

Once you are alone in your kitchen with a wolf-size glob of marzipan on the countertop, you can proceed to mould it into the shape of a wolf. The basic idea is to go for absolute verisimilitude, so that the members of your extended family or smaller kinship grouplet do a double-take.

“My oh my! What on earth is a wolf doing, sitting there without a care in the world on an enormous cake-stand in the middle of the dining table?” they will exclaim, before blinking a couple of times and adding, “Oh! Silly me! Look, it is all yellow and made out of marzipan!”

It can be a very tricky effect to pull off successfully, especially if you are cack-handed. Nor should you even begin the project if you are suffering from delirium tremens or from any other condition which causes you to shake uncontrollably, such as having recently spent five hours atop a vibrating platform or watched a terrifying non-documentary film about spooks and ghosties and monsters at the local fleapit.

Steady-handed, then, mould the marzipan accordingly, and place it on the aforementioned enormous cake-stand in the middle of your dining table. You are now ready to throw open the doors of the dining room and beckon your extended family or smaller kinship grouplet, who will be lounging around in the parlour glugging sherry and exchanging anecdotes, or, if puritanical, as they probably are given the bleak forbidding grim authoritarian nature of your household, sipping from tumblers of tap water and frowning in silence.

Bon appetit!

It is my lot as a scribbler to research subjects so you don’t have to. It is selfless and noble and ill-paid work, but I do it uncomplainingly – well, apart from those times, increasingly frequent, when I buttonhole bystanders at the bus stop or in the post office queue and unburden myself by delivery of a dyspeptic harangue. But otherwise I do not complain. So when Outa_Spaceman left a comment on the piece Find The Bailing Bucket, seeking further particulars of Urgh the howler monkey – mentioned at the very end of the page here – I set to the task with a will, with vim, even with gusto. Granted, at one point I did shout out of the window at a passing hoodieperson, but otherwise I spent uninterrupted hours with my head buried in the sorts of reference works where one might expect to find out all there is to be found out about howler monkeys. I can now present my preliminary findings.

The first thing to do is to cast from your mind everything David S Nelson of Falls Church, VA,* has to say about Urgh the howler monkey. He is wrong, wrong, wrong, and I think I know why. Mr Nelson has almost certainly garnered all that stuff about berries and anacondas and noisy breathing and disgusting bananas from a collection of newspaper cuttings held in a cardboard box in the archives of one of the less reliable howler monkey information centre libraries. It is a common enough mistake. You would not guess, from the PR guff put out by this particular library, that it is a hotbed of disinformation, possibly funded by Communists and similar weedy-brained ne’er-do-wells, but I guessed, because I am fab that way, and don’t you forget it!

The newspaper cuttings are convincing forgeries, but forgeries nevertheless. By dint of the pincer-like precision of my research, if I mean pincer-like, and I think I do, I can reveal exclusively that the deliberate counterfeiting of details of Urgh the howler monkey’s biography served a malign purpose, but fortunately not one with cataclysmic world-juddering implications. Indeed, if the fiendish scheme had come to fruition, it would have had an effect only within the immediate vicinity of the information centre, and the effect itself, hideously awful as it would be, would have dissipated within a day or so. It makes one wonder why some weedy-brained ne’er-do-wells will go to such lengths, it really does. But perhaps that goes some way to account for the weediness of their brains.

Having jettisoned the twaddle eagerly lapped up by Mr Nelson, what are we left with? A monkey, a monkey which howls, and which is called Urgh, By God!, it is not beyond the wit of man to track down such a creature and apprise oneself of the facts. That is why, tomorrow, I shall embark upon the next stage of my research. Having pored over the hefty leather-bound directories on the mahogany shelves of a reliable howler monkey information centre library, and made voluminous notes in my notepad with my propelling pencil on the location of a number of promising howler monkey colonies, I have already purchased a return ticket to travel potentate class on a freight container ship sailing tomorrow morning for an appropriate continent. My pippy bag is packed and I’m ready to go, I’m standin’ here outside a door, as Denver might have put it. I am brimming with almost laughable self-confidence that, upon my return, I will be in a position to write the definitive warts and all biography of Urgh the howler monkey, guaranteed to be one hundred percent true, and fully illustrated with pencil sketches, watercolours, rotogravures and mezzotints.

* NOTE : I think it is worth mentioning here that there is one inhabitant of Falls Church, VA, who proudly sports a Hooting Yard lapel accoutrement. But it is not David S Nelson. It is one John Huston, who, as a Hooting Yard reader, probably knows more about howler monkeys than Mr Nelson will ever learn.