Exactly What It Says On The Tin

Ok, so with some nice relaxing proper honest to goodness birding done on Saturday, it was time for some filthy tick-hungry twitching on Sunday!

Derbyshire had been too far to go for a certain big brown loudmouth, but Weston Super Mare?

One quick burn up the M5 later and I was stood on a bank in a very brisk and rather chilly wind at the least nasally offensive sewage works I've been to. Ok being very upwind may have had something to do with that, but still - a much nicer setting than I expected. The weather... less so. But not unsurprising, given the way the Met Office is these days.

Like the title says, the Great Reed Warbler was just that. A really big, really active and really noisy Reed Warbler! Literature and even recordings do not prepare you for this bird. Reed bed warblers are typically skulky little gits who you may well hear but aren't likely to see. Not so this boy. He was up and down and all over the shop. Vocal maybe 90% of the time and frequently interacting with the local [and rather unamused] Reed Warblers, the Great flew here and there, climbed up to sing in the open and even went up the Willows on the edge of the tank - actually harder to see as it was hidden by the catkins!

What a bird. :D

With Things happening on Patch, I decided to head back with only a minor detour.. Well, I've only seen 2 White Storks, and as it was so close to the M5...

Curry Moor was hot in the near-sun and before being flooded had seemingly had several cubic kilometres of slurry spread on it. Lovely. 'Rotting vegetation' my arse [PI], pig slurry, that was. If only my nose had still been blocked...

A yomp beside the Tone to the viewing spot led to nowt, so on I yomped to Curry Moor Drove itself, where the mud-wading resulted in me being told "It was just over there until about 10 minutes ago, when it was driven off by Crows. I didn't see where it went" After a lot of looking, it seemed that the Stork hadn't just dropped into a gully or ditch, but had buggered off somewhere else instead. Oh well...

Home again home again... One more piece of business to take care of. After all, it would be irresponsible not to monitor all migrants passing through my Patch.

Late afternoon and another record in the diary:

Olympic Torch, 1

[Plus
corporate ad-wagons, 3
'initiation shuttles'*, about 5
Met cops on bikes, 6
bicycle riders with spare torches, 4
assorted hangers-on and people who think they're important, I couldn't be arsed to stay and count]

[[*Coaches - I bet we've paid someone a hell of a lot of money to rebrand them. With a little sign on the front. The whole convoy meant that the only time you could actually see the Torch was when it was level with you..]]

I think I will have more to say on the subject at another time, so I'll leave it here.