IT has been a bit of a shock in recent weeks to find people taking notice of what appears within this small space on the back of the Weekend supplement.

It's Willis by the way, not Wills. It's okay David I'll sit here naively correcting your copy. Mistakes are so easy to make.

After the kind words in last week's letters page, it was a shame that last week's column was a bit of a joke-free zone.

It was partly my own fault as I'd written too much again. There only was two slightly amusing bits and one of them was sacrificed to fit the page.

I don't have enough jokes for them to just be cast unread into the ether so here it is again.

Rangoon is famous for its mix of colonial architecture, modern high-rises and gilded Buddhist pagodas. Sounds a bit like Hawes to me. Then you have Bangkok which is where British men go to enjoy sleazy after-dark entertainment, which is not dissimilar to Northallerton.

In context I can assure you it was absolutely hilarious.

So anyway this week I saw a huge flock of curlew heading east. Curlew are the tramps of the bird world. They spend the summer traipsing around the inland fields and fells, before heading to the seaside for the winter, possibly to wander and wonder in deserted amusement arcades before sitting on a damp and graffitied promenade seat watching a solitary dog walker pretend not to notice their pet taking a poo on the beach.

Curlews are one of the iconic images and sounds of the Dales and it's a shame they have to temporarily leave us but good to know there are still enough to make flocks.

It's with a similar sentiment that I greeted the news that an otter had been found dead on the road near Redmire this week. The animal was a good mile from the River Ure, or any beck of note, so what it was doing in the area is a mystery. That aside it is good to know there are otters about in our countryside. For every otter killed by a car, there will perhaps be three or four swimming about and catching fish somewhere fairly nearby.

Perhaps the otter was killed by one of the many motorists heading to the new cinema at Catterick this week. There was half of Wensleydale there when we went and the other half was there two days later when we went again.