Felbrigg Hall: son et lumiere and a flock of Bramblings!

Last night Linda, Sue, Peter and I made our (now) annual trip out to Felbrigg to enjoy a pre-Christmas walk through the delightful woodland and garden light display. Despite the eventual torrential rain, we had a thoroughly enjoyable time, with mulled wine, spiced apple and so on. A large mixed finch flock (well over 100 birds) flew over the gardens, before settling to reveal that about half were Bramblings: first of the Winter for me!

With dinner at the Crown, Banningham, this was a really pleasant start to the festivities!

Attention Marine reef-keepers!

Home wanted for two lovely Marine specimens! Our Cleaner Shrimp and Bush Coral have grown too large for our nano reef system, so we're looking for a good home for them within a short drive of Norwich. Contact me by e-mail if you're interested!

Housebound!

I hate having colds: in the past I would respond to the basic instinct that a good long walk in the fresh air would put things right. Two years ago, however, this approach led to a protracted hospital stay with double pneumonia, so I tend to be a little more cautious these days!

So (apart from a brief car drive to see the Eagle Owl on Tuesday) I've stayed in the office and got on with responding to the increasing daily pre-Christmas meteorite orders.

That's not to say there hasn't been things to look at from the office windows: Pink-footed Geese pass over the garden every day going to and from their feeding grounds at Buckenham, while Jays, Starlings, Magpies and Sparrowhawks are frequent visitors to the feeders. It's been amusing to see the rapid turn-over of potential winter residents in the 'owl' box: currently a Grey Squirrel has set up home, but has twice been displaced by Jackdaws!

Eagle Owl at Winterton and other chance encounters!

Having been more or less housebound for a fortnight, I persuaded Linda we needed a drive out to Acle to see the recently-present Crane flock: sadly, there was no sign, so I suggested a run-round through Hickling & Horsey. On the way we spotted some wild swans on Ludham Airfield: a short detour revealed not just a herd of Whoopers, but also sixty or so Egyptian Geese. In among these were two Ruddy Shelduck - the pinkish legs reveal a hybrid parentage, but nice birds to find.

We carried on towards Horsey, stopping at Waxham Barn for lunch. The new owners have improved the ambiance and menu, but we did have to wait forty minutes to be served! No doubt this will soon improve too...

At Horsey a scan of the fields revealed lots of the expected Pink-feet, but also several hundred Golden Plover: I'm 95% certain I picked out a Purple Sandpiper among them!

Since the time was now around 2.00pm, we felt it might be worth a quick look around Winterton Church to see if the somewhat elusive Eagle Owl was in view: astonishingly, as we passed the church we came across a small group who had pinned it down in a pine tree in someone's back garden! Always a silhouette, a bit of jiggery pokery with camera settings produced some reasonable shots of this astonishing bird. Lock up your cats, citizens of Winterton!

The International Space Station and a beautiful crescent Moon!

The ISS sailed over Norfolk tonight: the first of a long series of bright passes! (See table below)
The Moon is a waxing crescent and the terminator crosses some terrific craters, throwing them into fantastic relief: you can see lots of central peaks and superimpositions.

December Moon, the ISS and an astronomical catch-up!

Beautiful crescent Moon  last night: notice how a mountain peak near the south pole is catching the sunlight! If you have any sort of lens on your DSLR, this is a great time of year for lunar photography! I set the 'backlight' fully left and use a low ISO (200 or 400)

Tonight the International Space Station begins a series of passes, starting at 5.25. with another at 7.00: there's a table of the next ten days' passes below.

At the moment there are several planets viewable around dawn and dusk: Mercury and Mars rise just before the Sun, while Jupiter, Saturn and Venus are visible low in the west just after Sunset...

Quiz night at Heathlands!

Our annual all-singing, all-dancing quiz night in aid of Hemblington Church restoration fund took place last night. A full house enjoyed eight rounds of tormenting musical teasers that included two live music rounds on bass and six string guitar (played by yours truly!) The mid-quiz supper was a great success, huge thanks going to Linda, Sue, Lynda and Gwendoline and the others who bought, prepared and served it.

This year Peter & Peter elevated the scoring system to new heights, with continuously updated MS Excel spreadsheets that were displayed on two large monitors: this allowed everyone to see how well (or badly!) they were doing!

The winning received air guitars and a case of wine, while it was terrific to see old friends Joyce and Andrew (stalwarts of the Friends of the Church who recently deserted us for Suffolk!) winning the first prize in the raffle!

A few photos below: none of the real stars of the evening, Linda and Sue, who just wouldn't stand still long enough! We raised something around £800: a very pleasing sum! Many thanks to all who supported Linda, Sue, Peter and me!