A Bit of Light Relief

This post isn't all moaning honest!

Fortunately I'd gotten up at 6am this morning, if I hadn't I'd have soon been woken by the 'good 'ol pipeline' It's becoming like a member of the family, it really does grows on you in time! 7.10 am was the start up time this morning, how considerate! Still Tesco are doing their best to quieten it down look...

They're insulating it, supposedly for soundproofing but it looks suspiciously like it will just be warmer!!  Neat job they've done so far, can't see it surviving the ravages of a spot of Atlantic weather for long though.  You can judge for yourself how well the soundproofing is working, here's a video taken in my garden this morning. I've been recording the sound levels throughout the day and they peaked at 94 dB and are averaging around 85dB.



I was very pleased therefore to see on Birdguides that the Short-toed Lark was still present at Portland, I let Bun know and we were soon on our way. On arriving we could see a couple of birders just giving up looking, but within about five minutes Bun had spotted it in a small ploughed field. It was really difficult to pick out until it moved. Lovely little bird and a lifer for me ( Bun only 'needed' it for Britain). According to Collin's Bird Guide its rufous cap makes it a bird from Spain or North Africa. This was another one of those twitches I love, for a long time three was the highest number of birders looking. Until.....

Uum...that looks suspiciously like a tour coming from the Observatory. Not to worry they're not coming our way....oh..

...They are!!!

An RSPB tour. 

Actually we weren't mean enough to just scarper, we stayed and let anyone who wanted one have a look through our scopes. We only left because our parking ticket was due to run out...It's true!!

The bird was reasonably close in this ploughed field but unfortunately the rape in the foreground was just that bit too tall, making digiscoping it a bit tricky. As usual I had a go though. They're not all photos of soil...look closely!

When I got home the pipe was still going, in fact it was in action for about nine hours today. I popped out again to run a few errands and when I got home this had happened...

They'd only put this on our drive and strapped it to our fence. It's to stop the neighbours accessing their own path! We cut it free and dumped it back on the site. The Cheeky *****!!