Being Good and Being Bad

Being good today meant dragging up and zipping over to Hope's Nose before the doggers got going [not that sort of dogger, get your mind out of the gutter] and drove all the poor exhausted migrants away. This meant going before breakfast and thus before coffee, so it was in a dangerous mood that I shut the fucking gate properly and started seeing what was about.

Careful working of the Top Dell and South Side produced Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs, and Willow Warblers. Plus the usual suspects. A Stonechat popped up, then popped back down again, out of the wind. Onward, onward, watching the dewy grass... Ah, but wait, right down the bottom, here were not one but two lovely Wheatears! :) More was to come, as the first Whitethroat of the year gave a brief burst of song from beyond The Wall. As I crept up said Wall to try to get a better view, something sat on top of a tree caught my eye. A pipit. A Tree Pipit [it was on a tree. ;) ] - for once not flying over, just sitting there. Best of all, as I was heaving back up the First Slope, a Swallow came up past me! Then another! Then another! One, two, three.. Three Swallows, ah ha ha ha ha ha! [[Ahem.]]

Home. Food. Coffeeee.............

Right then, time for some filthy twitching! The Black-winged Stilt at Abbotsbury Swannery was very obliging, pottering around at nice scope range [for those of us who object to paying £10.50 - I mean, come on...] from the lane. I met a crew from up north who called themselves the Dunsford Dippers - a most amusing bunch, I have to tell you. As well as admiring the Stilt, we had an interesting time with a distant and very dark dove, which was probably just a very dark funny-looking Collared, but worth a good look nonetheless. Also very decent blokes, as when the heavens then opened in impressive fashion, with thunder and lightning to boot, they gave me a very welcome lift back to the car park.

I shamelessly sat out the downpour [something about standing around with a long bit of carbon fibre with a lump of metal on the end in a thunderstorm didn't appeal...], had my lunch and waited. Eventually the weather got bored and wandered off. I re-emerged and went back for seconds. Gorgeous bird; slender, elegant, graceful. Made me think of a Wilson's Phal on, well, stilts. I spent an hour more there before heading home, well-pleased.