An Aberration Revealed

Monday 17 July (05:30-07:30)
First patch walk since 23 May. Virtual absence of birdsong very noticeable. Peregrine on beach briefly major highlight. Also noted: 2 Herons, 4 Canada Geese E, c10 Manxies likewise. A few hirundines and Swifts moving. Autumn feels close.

Yes, it was my first visit to Burton Bradstock/Cogden for nearly eight weeks, and yes, it felt very different. Back in May the early morning air was bursting with song. Skylarks, Cetti's Warblers, Whitethroats, Reed Warblers, a single manic Sedgie, to name just a few. Yesterday it was so, so quiet. Autumn really did feel close. I wasn't expecting much, but I did have a target: Yellow-legged Gull. Juv YLGs were a summer feature on the Axe, and the occasional bird is to be expected along the coast here too. In fact one flew W offshore past West Bexington at 07:17 and no doubt past me shortly afterwards, but I was blissfully unaware and certainly not looking in the right direction at the right time. There'll be more, I'm sure...

Unlike a large percentage of my fellow birders I have not spent the intervening eight weeks hunched over a trap-full of flying weeds (as some wit on Twitter described moths) nor pursuing any other of the myriad bird-substitutes which fall in your beer and spatter your windscreen. No, like any sensible 58 year-old I have joined a gym.

I truly hope that some poor, unsuspecting NQS reader just sprayed an involuntary mouthful of coffee all over their screen...

Some blogs out there are pure reportage. Went there, saw this, and here's a photo/lots and lots of photos. They're okay I guess - if the subject interests you. But the ones I enjoy most are those that give you a bit of insight into the blogger, some clues to what makes him/her tick, a hint of human frailty here and there. Like a susceptibility to toe injuries, say. Yes, I like blogs of that kind.

Which is why I am sharing this news. I have never before been a member of a gym, my experience of them is minimal in the extreme, and it is quite likely that this aberration will reveal all kinds of interesting human frailties. In fact, I suppose it already has.

More anon...

It occurred to me that I've never featured the man-cave, so here it is (most of it anyway) taking up a hefty chunk of our tiny garden, and now the location of almost all NQS production.