Head In The Clouds

Few people look up much. Even before 95% of the population became lost in their own devices, most people only raised eyes to sky when prompted.
Birders are one of the exceptions. There being a lot more sky up there than feathered things, it does on occasion attract more than casual attention.

Yes indeed, as threatened promised last year, this is indeed that post..



What follows is exactly what it says on the tin; lots and lots and lots of pictures of the sky.

Curb your enthusiasm though, the odd one is almost pretty;

The back end of a serious squall

Looking the other way

Yes, that was rotating

Perhaps 'cell' would be the better term. The effects - not so much gusting as blasting wind and large hail among them - were certainly impressive.

The supermoon counts

And finally - yes, finally! - a sunrise sequence;

Th-th-th-that's all, folks.

Normal service will now resume, with some of the usual nonsense coming up sooner than you may expect.

Probably.


Be Seeing You..

Patchy Post

Because.


Patrolling the Patch in the vain hope of a white winger or three, or indeed a YBW [which was duly found by someone else, naturally], has been the order of the days - Exe tripping aside - and it's been pretty thin fare, I can tell you.
When you bounce around the sheltered side of the coast and don't find a single grebe, let alone a diver [that'd be Sunday, there] you do start to wonder.

But it's not all doom and empty waters, oh no.


Cutting off on a tangent, I'm starting to wonder if my camera is spoiling my blog. These things are supposed to be about me sharing my deranged rambling thoughts with whatever fragment of the world is interested [or bored, I don't deny it] enough to want to read them. My posts seem to be becoming more and more streams of bad to pretty good [honesty again] photos, with the odd sentence here and there. I'm more likely to burble in an email to some poor unfortunate than on here where I should be doing it.
And yes, this IS one of the burbles I'm talking about not doing and the irony is so ferric, but what can you do? I can't worry about not talking enough without talking about it.

The things is, I take these pictures and I want to share them, but time seems to be contracting on me and so the vast tracts of text and lots of pictures posts just don't happen.



So, burble over, on to some pictures taken about the Patch in the last couple of weeks.

Gulls on the Lead Stone

Nothing fancy

TCCT maintain devastation 

at Hope's Nose

['scuse raindrop]

The council loves that flail..

[hedge is cut to thigh-high]

GC Grebes off Meadfoot

[back when they were there]

GND, ditto

There's a big bracket;

Rigidoporus omarius

Poisonpie

Now for the pretties;

Same plant, a week apart

Not all Daffydowndillies 

were put off by the weather, though!

LTT pictures improving

"Well, at least you got all of her this time.."

In other news.. My feeders remain popular with a nice range of birds, including Herr Blackcap and four flavours of tits, but I haven't caught anything tree-ish [like say a nice GSW] even in passing, let alone on camera. Hmm. Perhaps the weather is too nice for them? Would be a good reason not to see them in.

I've been a little preoccupied with other and Important Business, but that should all be taken care of now, so I'm hoping to get more fun stuff done. Especially now I am ::crosses various body parts:: pretty much fixed. Certainly raring to go!


I shall

Be Seeing You..

Exe Raid

A leeetle delayed but never mind, eh? I'm sure the piccies down there were worth putting this off.


I was in fact on a busy shopping trip which just happened to involve stopping off at Matford, Bowling Green, and Dart's Farm.. Funny how that worked, isn't it?

Anyways, I had prior business with another scwewy duck, and despite getting rained on hard, it was unable to avoid me, with my stealth fieldcraft skills and everything!

One of theth duckth ith 

not like the otherth

There were more than Wigeon present, and though I had little time for that duck, I couldn't not do some proper birding. And there were so many Snipe. Have a look;

Just two sections of at least 61 of them! And no, not a single Jack in sight.. Deeerat.



 Onwards, onwards; I was racing the tide.

Where to? here to:

Lots of water

Lots of birds

Lots of optics

Ruff 1

Ruff 2

I rather like Egyptian Geese

Certainly better than Canadas...

This Greenshank 

was an utter showoff

See what I mean?

Farther and flightier displays were also on offer. Observe carefully, there's a test at the end!

Right then. Looked closely? Observed carefully?

Spot the Sanderling!


There is one in there somewhere. Clearly identifiable.

:D


Be Seeing You..





[Dart's Farm had nowt of note, but never mind, eh?]