More moaning

Sorry to start off with this, but better out the way....

I really hate this weather!!! Hot, humid, and yucky!

:(

Its the humidity I really hate, warm evenings aren't bad at all - especially with Swifts screaming past the window..

Right then.

After that whole 'post a day' thing, time for some consolidation instead! So;

Tuesday. Plans to have another go at the funny gull were shelved with news of a summer plumaged male Ruff at Dawlish Warren the evening before. Plus terns. Unsurprisingly the Ruff was gone, and the terns were hanging around as far away as they could possibly get.... There were about 20. They were terns. That's it. 2 Sarnies came for a fish later on, but no others. Good points were nice showy Whitethroats, a big flock of Sanderling [about 80] and Dunlin and Ringos right right in front of the hide. :)

The tide fell away and the terns stayed distant, so I decided to head over to an unspecified site in the Haldon area to see if the Turtle Doves felt more obliging, and in a radical turn up for the books, they were. Not that obliging, but 3's not a bad number, is it? Even if they were mostly flying away... A different site normally good for Little Owl proved less productive, and with that I called it a day.

Wednesday. Things to do...

Thursday. Back to Hope's Nose on the off chance. Hot, humid, dead calm. With the aid of the Big Scope, a 'circa 250' Guillemots on and around the Ore Stone. No sign of any funny larids. Great big american ship with a bridge on the back in the bay! Went on to Berry Head for a long lunch watching the colony there. This is an old habit of mine, sadly neglected recently. Things keep changing at Berry - they've been cleaning up the South Fort, put in a shiny new bridge and stuff, and of course there's the new visitor centre/utterly pretentious 'cafe' and the hide. I didn't use it - its not in the right place to see all the ledges, the tiddly windows are a pain with a scope, and there's all the dudes wandering in and asking what "the black and white ones" are [go there and you'll see why this is so funny].

::Deep breath:: I have a bench. Its nice, there's a good view, its out of the way of the packs of ravening dogs, there's a Whitethroat territory down the cliff... A 'circa 1250' Guilles around and about, with at least one Razorbill on the sea, plus 18 Kittiwake and 7 Fulmar nests, a couple of very distant divers [looked GND], with 7 late Common Scoters past east, and the resident Harbour Porpoises showing up well on the flat sea. What was probably a third summer Yellow-legged Gull, sat on a distant rock next to an adult Herring Gull, proved an interesting distraction from scanning the ledges for Razorbills [didn't find any there, though]. It was a good time to watch the colony - calm and warm, but just enough wind to ward off the smell... ;)

The contrast between me on my bench, with the bushes and the sounds of Whitethroat song and Kittiwake and Guille racket, and the full car park's worth of assorted tourists, dog and kid walkers wandering around the main drag - well, that's summer Devon in a nutshell, isn't it?

Today. Added Swift to the 'Birds Out the Window during lunch at My Course' list. Suffered in the heat and humidity. Was rather gripped by the Tystie picking the one day I can't get there to pop up at the Warren. I really like them, especially in s/pl. Oh well. I'm not yearlisting, so I won't be chasing it. Nope. Definitely not. Too bladdy hot to be running around there anyway...