Making Do

Much to my disappointment I haven't found any rare birds in the last couple of outings, and have had to make do with a rich variety of common muck. Life is sometimes so hard...

I'm a sucker for a posing Stonechat

One local spot I've been trying to visit fairly regularly, there are lovely grassy meadows running back from the cliffs, and they are heaving with Meadow Browns. On Tuesday evening I inadvertantly flushed a few Woodpigeons in one field, and they in turn sparked an eruption of butterflies. I wanted somehow to convey this lepidopteral abundance in an image, so had a go at photographing through the grass, against the light, so that the butterflies show up as silhouettes. Unfortunately it doesn't do justice to the real thing. As usual...

Burton Bradstock. Meadow Browns in long grass. There were thousands of them.

Whitethroat on a stick at West Bexington yesterday afternoon.

Adult Herring Gull with incipient Dross, West Bexington again.

Male Linnet giving it some welly, East Bexington

I've enjoyed taking advantage of photo-opportunities whenever they arise, even with common birds. It's been good practice, just getting used to whipping the camera out and firing it up, and will hopefully stand me in good stead when future goodies pop up in front of me. Which I'm sure they will...

A couple of pics to illustrate some of the habitat I am saddled with locally. Quite honestly I don't know how I manage to endure it...

A view of West Bexington that I'd never seen before. Looking down on the village from the South Dorset Ridgeway.

East Bexington, looking towards Portland. The anglers are concentrated in front of Abbotsbury Beach car park.

One feature that both East and West Bexington have in common is a decent number of fences. Fence wire and fence posts are well-known rarity magnets. It will happen. I know it will.

Finally, a couple of spectrovids to sign off. The first is a short recording of a West Bexington Lesser Whitethroat rattling away in yesterday afternoon's sunshine. As I sit here with the rain lashing down outside, it conveys a nice feel of summery weather. The second recording is an absolutely amazing bit of Barn Owl from Tuesday night's nocmig. The Barn Owl utterence that I am used to is a single shriek, one second long. Occasionally there'll be another faint one, distantly, some time later, but generally not. Here we have an astonishing 24 audible shrieks in just over two minutes, and goodness knows how close it must have come! Enjoy...