Desperate Measures

I successfully saw the flock of Golden Plovers in the field next to the A3052 today on the third time of trying. The problem is there are no convenient gateways to stop in and view the field in question. I had been advised to go along the farm track, which I have been doing but the birds haven’t been in the part of the field viewable from here. The only thing for it was to either not see them or walk along the narrow, twisty, very busy road which leads off the A3052 to Honiton. So this I did... I soon located them through a small gap in the hedge, but not satisfied with a mere glimpse, decided to set my scope up on top of the hedge and try for at least a decent view and at bestt a decent photo. Traffic was passing within a few feet and I began to feel a bit foolhardy. They were only Golden Plovers after all!! I counted 36 in total. Here are some snapshots I risked my life to get (ok bit of an exaggeration) one showing eight blobs and also a nice close up Actually I'm quite happy with it considering. And I did have great views .

After a nice hot cuppa and an afternoon nap, (how old am I?!!) Old enough for an afternoon nap obviously! I rushed up to Coronation Corner to twitch a Med Gull, yes that’s right a Med Gull which Gav kindly let me know about because he knew how desperate to see one I’ve been getting. I hadn’t had a Med Gull fix since early September!! We didn’t see anything else too interesting but Black-tailed Godwit numbers have risen again with around 60 on show.

Almost forgot, here's another picture from yesterday's ringing. It's the whole team, minus Steve (left for work) and Mike (taking photo). You can see how cold we all look and also how I'm trying to cheer everyone up with what was obviously a very funny joke!! Actually I was in the process of falling over.

Still got the Trojan, haven’t resorted to formatting yet, getting there slowly, very slowly….