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When the famous art critic Brian Sewell saw this painting he let me know that he thought my knowledge of avian anatomy lamentable. I didn't contradict the great man but I thought, "he hasn't seen the spotted pie-snatcher". That aside, the painting depicts the only remaining pair in the country in their favoured habitat of a tall Jessop tree, which was in fact transplanted from a bog in Hampshire to the grounds of Cavaghan and Gray's pie factory in Carlisle in a joint venture betwen Bill Oddy and the manager of Carlisle United, Uff Bottlesby, an amateur and very dedicated ornithologist. Evidently when Uff was a boy in the '50s, a colony of the birds used to roost in the tree outside their kitchen window where the rising aroma of the delicious steak pies his mother put out to cool on the window sill seemed to encourage them to breed. In a time of family hardship, his mother was later to sell the recipe to Cavaghan and Gray. Anyway, the strategy seems to have worked. |
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