This season I thought it might be interesting (and maybe even useful) to review mistletoe coverage in the media on a more strategic basis. Mistletoe Diary has often covered media before, quite often accompanied by my rants about the inaccuracy of some of it, but maybe the concept deserves a more considered approach. Not sure what that means yet (should I give ’em marks out of ten?) but maybe it’ll become clearer with time…
So, here’s report #1 for this season – and yes I know it’s early, but some of the glossy Christmas mags are out already. There’s quite a few of them in the pipeline this season (and that’s just the ones I know about) so plenty more to come. Plus the first TV news query of the season came in today so it must be the right moment.
First example of the season is… LandLove magazine, a relatively new glossy bimonthly that’s aiming at the lifestyle/countryside market.
They’ve got a 6 (yes SIX) page feature on mistletoe (there’s a mini slideshow of the pages below) – and it is, largely, excellent – no major complaints from me. And that’s just as well really as Natalie Mason, who wrote it, did talk it through with me some weeks ago – and so if were are any major problems they might have been my fault. Covers our Grow-kits too (many thanks for that Natalie).
My only general concern is the plethora of pictures on the final spread – lots of mistletoe decorations etc. But it is a life-style mag, and these would probably be missed if they weren’t there, so I shouldn’t grumble at that – this isn’t trying to be BBC Wildlife!
But there is one glaring oddity – on the second pair of pages. It’s that’s bird photo on the left-hand page (see detail left). The bird drawing on the right-hand page is, as captioned, a Mistle Thrush, Turdus viscivorus. But the bird photo on the left hand page is, unless I’m very much mistaken, er, an Australian Mistletoe Bird Dicaeum hirundinaceum. It’s definitely not a Mistle Thush as captioned.
Bit of a mess-up on the ornithology front there – though, to be fair, that Mistletoe Bird pictured is doing its stuff properly – nice pic with a berry in the beak and so could, if you ignore the plumage, be a Mistle Thrush. But the differences are deeper than that of course – and as all Attenborough’s Life of Birds fans know, Mistletoe Birds are those ones with the classy bottom moves. They shit defecate their mistletoe seeds one at a time, wiping those sticky seeds out and off their bums with a sexy little bum wiggle. That’s a down-under (geddit?) talent that our Mistle Thrushes haven’t yet mastered.
Jonathan's Mistletoe Diary 