Daytime Hog!

Just now Linda glanced out of the kitchen window to see one of our four resident hedgehogs enjoying a meal of suet on the lawn! Always a thrill to watch these engaging little animals at close range.

The Boys are Back in Town!

Tim, Garth, Olly and I will be back at the Hermitage, Acle on Sunday, playing our well-loved rock and blues set: be great to see you there! We start at 4.30 and go on until 8.00-ish (Or until we run out of numbers!)

Here are the set lists, to give you an idea of whose reputations we will be damaging!

Sky Watcher 127: slowly getting the hang of it!

Just before sun set yesterday, the waxing crescent Moon was a beautiful sight above the western horizon. It was a mild evening, so I set up the telescope, ZWO CCD camera and laptop in the back garden and took a few shots. Despite what you are told when you buy this sort of gear, it's never easy to master and I still have a lot to learn: nevertheless, I was quite happy with the results. (The complete crescent image was taken with my usual 300mm prime)

Glossy Ibises at Hickling

An early start saw me at Stubb Mill by around 6.30, scanning the pools and reedbeds at the eastern end of the reserve for the reported pair of Glossy Ibises. No joy, but three Great White Egrets and ten Spoonbills roosting distantly were noteworthy: just like being back on the Somme.

A walk around the whole loop added little apart from scores of Four-spotted Chasers and Norfolk Hawkers. I was on the point of leaving when I thought I'd take one last look at Bishop's Reedbed - and there they were! Distant but, as always, terrific to see!

Camera frustration!

Some of you may recall that I have a decent Sky Watcher 127 Maksutov reflecting telescope, coupled with a ZWO CCD camera, with which I've taken some acceptable photos of the Moon. With Jupiter and Saturn both in the southern sky before dawn, I thought I'd have a bash at imaging one or both of them. Before dusk, I set up the 'scope, camera and laptop and got some terrific screen-filler oak leaves on a tree nearly half a mile away! 

Crawling out of bed at 3.00am, I started off by observing both giant planets (as well as M31, the Andromeda Galaxy) and was thrilled by how well I could see Jupiter. I could make out half a dozen cloud belts and the four Galilean satellites, all on one side. Try as I might, I could not get the CCD to put an image on my monitor: most frustrating. I won't be beaten, though: watch this space! I took a few photos with my 400mm zoom and a combination of converters, but the results were predictably inferior to what I could see 'live' in the telescope.

Jupiter UFO

During my periodic clean up of my SD cards, I looked back at the images I took of Jupiter and its four largest moons in late May. Putting them in sequence, it's intriguing to observe the erratic movements of the extremely bright point of light to the west of the planet. It seems almost every time I photograph the Moon or planets I capture some strange, unidentifiable object...

Ironic!

As I was going through the photos from yesterday's survey at Hemblington Church, I realised that I'd left my Hornet Clearwing lure hanging in the poplar hedge! I drove up to the church to retrieve the lure and was instantly struck by the number of Yellowhammers and Whitethroats I could see and hear! Neither of these figured in our count, despite conditions being almost identical.

I decided to walk around the block, past the Alpaca farm to obtain some estimate of overall numbers. The result was astonishing: twenty+ Whitethroats and twelve Yellowhammers! Additionally I came across a Marsh Harrier with two red/orange wing tags, as well ass Norfolk and Brown Hawkers.

Survey and Butterfly talk...

An enjoyable few hours at Hemblington Church, with over twenty species of bird recorded: the list included Hobby, six Buzzards, a Marsh Harrier and a Red Kite. No Blue or Great Tits, strangely! Linda, Sue and I logged everything that moved, including a good selection of bees and half a dozen Norfolk Hawkers. Not a single Butterfly, however!

A Spotted Orchid was a churchyard  for me, but when old friends Joyce and Andrew arrived from Suffolk, they confirmed that they had recorded the odd flower-spike in the past.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the talk: I was pleased for Sue that a reasonable audience turned up, given the amount of work she puts into the organisation of these events.