Yeah, That WAS Good

I wasn't intending to watch the opening ceremony, but ended up staying up for it all. I always like the parade of athletes, but the often pretentious nonsense that goes on before.. well. And to be fair there was a bit of the latter, very much Danny's friends and his politics, oh dear. But the rest ranged from good to inspired and I have to say I thought it was a darn sight better than the last one. Especially the cauldron, which was sheer genius.

But enough of that.

Eventually getting up yesterday I gave up any plans of a day out and wandered about the Patch instead. Mostly very quiet, as you'd expect, with the fun coming from Hope's Nose [ah, what's new..]. The auks are all gone, as you'd expect, but a lone Fulmar was hanging around. A few Gannets were fishing offshore, but other than Shormorants the sea was the preserve of tossers on jetskis, powerboats, and yachties. My attention wandered [yeah, right] to the assorted gulls loafing around, especially when two idiots in a small boat flushed all of them from the Lead Stone. Fresh juveniles are pretty smart-looking gulls, it has to be said, and as well as a dozen Herrings, there were 4 GBBs and a Yellow-leg set up with 40-odd adults and scrawny immatures. The Yellow-leg was a really nice one too, but didn't fly over and pose, as a couple of Herrings did. Cute things, baby Herrings. When they keep their gobs shut, anyway..

Two juvenile Whitethroats were cute if noisy, but elsewhere I was mostly chasing butterflies.. [[Oh dear, oh dear...]] After a bit of kerfuffle a flighty Blue revealed itself to be.. Common. Better were my first two Marbled Whites at the Nose and a very confiding Six-spot Burnet moth, which was utterly unbothered by my peering at it. :) I also got a surprise - a dragonfly! Not what you'd expect at the bottom of the Nose.. More so, it was a small hawker lacking green bits on the thorax or yellow costa - a Migrant! [[It may be observed that a dragonfly right by the sea with no fresh water anywhere nearby would likely be a migrant - though not necessarily a Migrant... ;) ]]

Today, the big gribbly showers made things interesting, with me ending up wandering about Slapton. Despite the brisk wind, the sun [when it wasn't tipping down] was very warm and I was a bit disappointed to only see a female Common Blue damselfly and an unidentified [due to sheer speed] hawker spp. A magnificent Silver-washed Fritillary was much better, accompanied by several Red Admirals and a whole heap of assorted Whites. Among the gulls knocking around was a smart juvenile LBB and of interest among the ducks were 4 Pochard and two weird things which looked very much like drake MallardxPintail..!


EDIT: Forgot to mention the Swifts! I had a merry old time counting this evening, getting a max of 94 - which is pretty darn good - and with many of them down at low level I have little doubt more than 100 birds were present. :D