I have many personal woes right now [none really that serious, in the greater scheme of things, but they add up], one of which is the horrible lack of variety in this here blog.
I feel a responsibility to those brave mad souls who regularly read this stream of nonsense and odd half-decent photos. Getting 'I dragged myself over to the Nose and saw maybe something but I couldn't get a photo, so here's another moth or 17' every week for maybe quite a while isn't going to wear.
And while I don't do this for the views [oh Goddess I really don't... You can tell by the way I'm still going in year 12] - I would keep going even if nobody looked at it [as when I first started.. Ahem.] - still people do. View. Repeatedly. Follow, even. Even when I post horrid immature Herring Gulls that kind of look like other kinds of gull. A bit.
Perhaps if there were more mental hospitals open..?
[That would be a joke,]
Ahem.
Anyways, saturday the wotsit of August saw me wander over to the Nose in pouring rain, which was despite all met office assurances, NOT a shower. It let up for maybe 10 minutes, then rained hard for hours again.
I got very soggy, having not worn waterproof trollies on account of it being august and also discovering my allegedly waterproof jacket wasn't so much... Drat.
Earlier afternoon it let up a bit - I was long home by then - so I mutilated my poor Willow-y Trees and the poor Lavender to boot. They are now in fancy pots. Possibly the best part of the process involved obtaining crocks for drainage. Having no old broken pots I did the obvious thing and bought a new one. Then applied my trusty geological hammer*.
Of interest, both trees had finger-thick stems but no roots to match; both growing from fine wide meshes of thread-thin ones. Not what I expected.
Got a bit sidetracked, there. [[No, I'm not editing it out. It's colour. :P ]]
Getting back to the Nose and something like the point...
11-Spot Burnet Moths...
Ahem...
I actually got some half-decent birds.. ::Gasp!::
Firstest and coolest was the Gropper I kicked up from the path by the Wheatear Landing Platform! It flew off upslope - in that wonderful dipped fanned tail way they do like they'll stall at any second - and vanished into a patch of Gorse. Not even a Patch year tick, though...
What was one was the Arctic Skua which came trolling by south on the Manx line around 1015. I even had a go with the camera... But while I did hit it twice, you can't tell what the hell it is.. Drat.
[Yes, it's August and I'm only now getting my second skua sp... Still not seen a Bonxie!?!!]
A bit closer, the /a / that YLG was sat about on the Lead Stone for a while, but again camera not feeling helpful. The gull didn't exactly make matters easy either. Pics not definitive, so you get excused again.
Even more so the Com Sand that was flicking about out there - I couldn't even hit it!
Have a nice 2nd brood Blackbird, instead
[Yes, it was raining when I took that]
Not a gull's head, that's a Dunlin!!
At least two there. [Of interest, the Com Sand was pretty much halfway between that Dunlin and the wave-washed rocks...]
Told you the photos were awful.
Let us instead do more nattering..**
He says he saw an Arctic Skua. With bins, passing about 2/3 of a mile offshore. Against admittedly flat overcast light.
How??
Let me go through the anatomy of an identification;
Scanning the sea, I pick up a bird flying south. It stands out by being notably dark, and having a different flight action to the gulls and odd Gannet wandering about out there. This is jizz, that mix of what it looks like and how it moves that lets you pick birds out at a glance. Skuas look too dark and too purposeful, there's a hint of raptor about them. Though this is one to be careful with, as gulls - especially Kittiwakes - can employ a very similar [quite possibly deliberately, for Kitts!] action. Different skuas have different jizz, with Bonxies being sawn-off [short rear end] flying barrels that bore through the air with utter contempt for most weather conditions, for example. The others have noticably long tails - unlike almost all gulls - though side-on at range and against the light, you can't always tell [can't be too easy, now can it?].
This one was flying deliberately, but not boring through the sky. Its long rear end and overall 'light' impression ruled out Bonxie and the shifting of height in response to the wind - and lack of an obvious bulging breast - made Pom less likely. [The way it didn't make me mistake it for a tern pretty ruled out Long-tail, by the way; they tend to bounce as they flap and always seem to be struggling in any kind of wind].
Having the luxury of tracking it through, I was able to keep on the bird and see it fully side-on [always helps for structure] and confirm the body and wing shape [Poms and Arctics have different proportions; Poms having thicker and so shorter-looking arms in proportion to their hands]. It didn't do anything exciting, just kept going.
It does help that I've seen a few skuas, especially what they look like through bins then scope.
And no, I couldn't tell what morph it was. [I'm not getting into that here]
Well, that was something a bit different.
Be Seeing You...
[[* For those of you who are thinking about Shawshank right now; no that was not a geological hammer, that was a toffee hammer. A real geological hammer is 2lbs of special steel with a chisel on the back end. Will shatter granite. ::Very toothy smile:: I wrapped my poor sacrificial pot in a sheet and gave it a gentle tap. CRUNCH. Good times. :D ]]
[[** I am trying to insert some variety. Not sure how well I'm succeeding, mind.]]
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