Not About Rocks. Honest.

Have you recovered from the horror yet? I know, terrible the things I'll inflict upon you... Still, it could be worse. Don't believe me? Four words; justin beiber audio clips.

::Waits for the screaming to stop::

See? Vast burbles about mud sound so much better now, don't they?

:)

Right then, on with the fun.

Well, for the past couple of days I've been spending probably far too much time watching Swifts. Other than a lovely moment when one came past so close I could hear the rush of air, it was exactly as you'd expect. Lots of Swifts [well, mostly the dozen or so very local ones] zipping around like jet fighters. No funny-looking ones [apart from a couple of glimpses of the feather-damaged Swift], no funny-sounding ones. Drat and double drat.

In my quest to prove I haven't missed something spectacular [[and thus avoid having to bash my head against the wall whilst wailing piteously...]] I have even gone so far as to publicly humiliate myself on a Certain Internet Forum To Do With Birds. [[Yes, I swore I'd never do that again, but never say never...]]. However, despite well over a hundred views, my request for help has gathered precisely 0 replies. Not even a "Shut up you hallucinating stringer". I'm a little disappointed, I must admit. I can understand the 'Guess the Bird' lot not being interested, but there are some very good very serious birders on there, who know a huge amount and, well, I hoped I'd get at least an 'Yeah, that's odd but this one time in 1985...' or something, you know? Oh well.

Having spent a fair while Swift-watching on Saturday, I was later than I desired getting to Stover [which was the backup as I was too late getting going to go where I'd originally intended to go]. Still, I saw 11 species of odonata, which was a nice total, including star billing to a female Common Hawker, with Broad-bodied Chaser just beating 4-spotted for most numerous dragonfly [while Azure walked away with most numerous damsel]. Late on, I managed to drop what looked very much like a Honey Buzzard out my back window - it had a nice long tail, but was distant and resolutely side-on, so bins weren't going to clinch it. I took the risk and dashed for the scope. I got it there and up in a creditable 20 seconds, but to no avail, as of course the bird took the chance to vanish*, and another one gets away. Triple drat.

[[*The two smug-looking Herring Gulls circling in the area may have had something to do with this, the gits...]]

Today, an amble on't Moor with the Folks gave cute juvenile Wheatears, a 3 on 3 Peregrine vs Buzzard fly-off [thus ambiguity about location], a couple of immature LBBs past south, a half dozen Goldfinches past east, and a whole heap of gorgeous Golden-ringed Dragonflies [plus a single Large Red Damselfly hiding from the wind]. The wind helped it from getting too horrific, as the sun was very hot [funny, you'd almost think it was July or something...] and we had a good day.