Time passes, careless birders fall on their arses and damage themselves, said bits refuse to heal, and when they seem to change their minds promptly change them back..
Anyway...
Its been a whole week, which is far too long, but in my defence there has been the usual nonsense this time of year sets upon me, plus I'm back on the Dreaded Day Shift... Oh well. That proverb about rain, you know?
Last Sunday; after a rather too long lie-in I decided driving wasn't a good idea [especially driving 2 hours plus to go after a certain little green bird... :( ] and tagged along with the Folks for a wander along the Bovey. This went quite well; though a small group of Redpoll didn't stop, and neither did the LSW [oh yes], a Dipper posed like a porn star for us, very close, and not at all bothered by little black dogs. [[Yes, I know there's only one of her, but sometimes it seems that isn't the case..]] There were a few Fieldfare and Redwing knocking about the treetops, 5 bands of tits and crests, plus Mum got on a small green warbler with a prominent supercilium. I didn't. Drat, double drat and indeed triple drat. She didn't get it well enough to be sure what it was, and it didn't call [that I could hear over the tit band it was with]. Oh well...
Cut to Friday afternoon, as with my wrist still not right I decided not to stay on at work for any longer than I had to - I'd kept catching it as it was - so I had some weekday daylight to use and [with no time to realistically get to Dorset and find the Hume's before it got dark if it was being at all elusive] I hit the Patch. It got a good bash... with not much to talk about. A GSW was nice, and 2 singing Song Thrush were new since last patrol. I also went to the Nose and kicked the rock. [If this makes you go 'WTF?!?' then read prior post. Ok, if you have it still might...] This I succeeded in doing without a) hurting my foot and b) falling on my arse again, so I feel much better. I also had a good look at it and discovered it was not siltstone as I had thought, but slate covered in some weird thin grainy lichen. Well, that explains the slipperiness then...
Yesterday was taken up with Doing Stuff. I think the best bird I saw was a Blue Tit in the Garden. It was very nice, mind. I like Blue Tits.
This morning I again bashed the Patch. The wind kept a lot of the birds down, with the only notables being some grebes and a gull [[Flee! Flee while you can!]]. Off Blackball late morning were at least 8 GC Grebes and a Slavonian [nice]. While I was looking at the Slav, I caught a flash of movement near it and saw an angled splash, not unlike that of a Gannet. 'Ooh, a Gannet?' I thought, and kept on the spot it had hit. It didn't come up. Nor did anything else. It was a long way out, far beyond what even an olympic angler [is there an angling olympics?] could cast, and after 5 minutes I realised nothing was coming up. I looked up, but a thin yet solid cloud layer hid any passing airliners. Something fell into the sea - a lump of plane or a meteorite?
Oh yes, I mentioned a gull.... I saw it out the back - a 1w Herring fighting a Crow for a lump of baguette. Not much of interest, but then the gull pulled the full-on Albatross Display, long call and all, which only Caspians are supposed to do. Huh. I had a longer look at this Herring, which though it never posed side-on, still showed some nice dark tertials with white tips, but not a lot else - no dark coverts, no grey mantle, no white head and blotchy boa. Though the Crow had lost, it was not defeated and soon enough a mate showed up - the 2 corvids saw the gull off and in flight it had a very white tail and rump with a nice black terminal bar. Also long wings with a very Caspian-sized window... But not a very white underwing. An interesting gull, it dropped down a street or so away, prompting me to go after it. I naturally couldn't find it again.
So... Waters; muddier. I'm not saying it was anything other than a Herring. Well, ok I am saying it seemed to have Caspian in it, somewhere in the tangled web of its ancestry. The chief point being that, as with Yellow-legs, there is no Caspian indicator that cannot be shown by Herring. No magic feathers here, either. ;)
This afternoon I went for a wander around Yarner with the Folks. Tilly actually made herself useful and flushed a Woodcock, which we all got on! Well done that pog. She also behaved herself in the hide, at least once we got her in - there are mice underneath it and she tried her very best to suck them out with her nose..! The feeders held most of the activity, 5 flavours of Tit, plus Chaffs, a Nuthatch, and a male GSW! It didn't hang around long, but gave my parents their best ever views. There were winter thrushes on display, with a big group of Redwing in the treetops upstream from the car park and a few Fieldfare at the head of the Yarner valley.
Of interest, quite a few of the young Rowans are showing fresh growth - very odd for December, even in Glorious Devon - I fear they'll regret that soon enough, but it does show how warm its been. The trees are mostly bare now there, though with still a few stubborn leaves that annoy dreadfully when looking for small birds! The autumn snows - my Mum's name for the drifts of leaves that come down in the wind - have fallen for another year. I- am not going to go on about Yarner again!
Ahem.
Instead, I'm going to go on about small waders and why they're little gits...
But not yet.
;)
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