Osprey at the car boot!

An Osprey flew low, west over the A140 Park & Ride at 9.00am (Sadly, I'm not in the habit of taking my camera to a car boot!)

Odds & ends...

On Friday I enjoyed a walk around Strumpshaw with Red O'Hara and his friend Barry: we saw three different Bitterns, lots of Snipe and the first Redwings of the Autumn.

On Saturday I was lecturing at Kelling Heath and enjoyed visiting their delightful Red Squirrels...

 

 

 

 

North Coast search!

Despite a seven mile walk around Walsey Hills, Salthouse / Gramborough, Stiffkey (both 'ends'!) my oldest buddy Martin & I spent a pleasant day failing to see any Yellow-browed Warblers! We did see lots of common waders, a Firecrest and lingering butterflies and dragonflies....Oh! And John Furze, too! Also: superb bit of advertising on this 'Emirates' Jumbo!

Carping on!

Amazingly, despite the weather breaking (heavy rain & strong winds) the carp were still feeding sporadically yesterday: I had two (9.5lb and 5lb) and Phil had a cracking 10.5lb mirror....

Astronaut update....

Last two possible Apollo Astronauts: Rusty Schweickart & Walt Cunningham. Real gentlemen both! So that's at least one from each Apollo mission

Scratch band!

Well: still bashing it out, even with bus passes in three out of four wallets! Chris, Colin, Colin and yours truly playing a well-received rock set on Saturday night....

Deer me!

Amazingly close views of a Muntjac feeding under our bird tables tonight! First time we've seen one in broad daylight - she was completely unworried by us, although a little wary of next door's cat!

 

Second innings!

If you think I know little or nothing about Odonata, let me assure you I know even less about Orthoptera! This cricket was on my wall this afternoon: I'm assuming it's an Oak Bush Cricket....

Cricket season!

Another interesting walk around the Fen, today in the company of bug-expert Mike and the always affable Brian! Lots of Migrant Hawkers still, as well as several Dark Bush Crickets and a very obliging Willow Emerald.
No birds close enough for me to photograph well, but several Kingfishers, lots of Ruff and at least fifteen Snipe were good to see.

A stroll in the Autumn sunshine....

A snatched five miles with Kim (and for a while Ben!) at the Fen today. Nothing 'crippling' but then, that's not what patching is about! Just some beautiful birds & insects: Southern & Migrant Hawkers still, Snipe everywhere Kingfisher, Marsh Harrier and large flocks of Lapwing, Wigeon and Shoveller....

More carp!

Another couple of hours at my favourite little lake produced these three carp as well as a female Emperor dragonfly, several Kingfishers and a flock of Golden Plover.

Astronauts!

Just back from quality-time with three Apollo Astronauts:
Walt Cunningham (Apollo 7)
Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9)
Gene Cernan (Apollo 17 - last man on the Moon)

Constitutional!

Grabbed a couple of hours at the Fen today, following a weekend down in Oxfordshire / Bucks. Few nice odds and ends: an Otter swam through Fen Hide scrape, a Kingfisher flashed away from the Sluices and the Snipe were still loitering in front of Tower Hide.

On the Hawker front: chatting to Ben, I'm resigned to spending more time at Winterton next year trying to nail Common Hawker. I'm still confused by the DFs I photographed at North Pool: they were both much too big to be Migrants, but seem to have lacked most of the necessary features to be the target species. Perplexing that the ones I saw look very much like some of the Commons on Wikipedia and other online resources, and aren't significantly different from some of the images in my field guides.....

While we're being technical: the guides say that a narrow bar joining the eyes is a discriminator for Variable Damsel - so is this one?

Just outside my office window is a Bay Tree which has an old Blackbird's nest in it: several Wrens roost in it every night, ignoring the purpose-built box that Linda put up!