Disaster

Friggatriskaidekaphobia, what a great word! Clearly it means an irrational fear of Friday the thirteenth, which today just happens to be. I do not have this affliction myself and for the life of me cannot see how any name or number attached to a day can make it any luckier/unluckier than any other, pure mumbo-jumbo! In fact, I can categorically state that I can't remember a single unfortunate occurrence happening to me on any of the 66 Friday the thirteenths that I have so far lived through. (Yes I'm nerdy enough to have worked that out). So when a catastrophic disaster (for my birding at least) occurred this morning it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the date!

I decided to take Rex for a quick stroll on the beach, hoping to see a Wheatear (or better) and took along my scope to have a quick scan over the sea too. Well, I was setting it up when I noticed something was amiss, it was strangely limp - I'm no technical expert but I know a spotting scope should generally be rigid rather than floppy. It was inside the stay-on case so I couldn't see what the problem was. I assumed the eyepiece had come loose, yes, surely that could be the only explanation!? When I undid the drawstring covering the eyepiece end I was astonished to find that all of the scope from the back of the focusing ring to the eyepiece had fallen off, simply FALLEN OFF!! Three tiny screws were rattling around loose inside. How on earth could three screws unthread themselves when they were contained entirely within the scope! Weird.

So as I write this my scope is in the capable hands of the Royal Mail (eek!) winging its way to the Nikon Service Centre, where I'm told they will look at it and let me know what they can do. I got the impression the guy on the phone thought I was joking at first when I said it hsd fell in two. No doubt they will try and blame me when they spot the damage to the objective bezel, which it sustained when it blew over a couple of months ago. It's been fine ever since then (well up until today) so I can't see that that was the cause. Anyway I was also informed that IF they repair it I will have to wait at least 3 or 4 weeks!

I can only hope for a reasonably speedy (and inexpensive) repair and return- I'm not holding my breath though...I'm a bit annoyed... No one mention seawatching ... Please! :( :(

Full of The Joys of Spring?

I've seen a few lovely spring-like scenes on my travels today. This morning driving through Axmouth a pair of Collard Doves were snuggled together one resting its head (lovingly) on the others breast, newborn lambs were gamboling around the fields, primroses and wild daffodils were adorning the lanes and over the road from my house the male Herring Gulls were trying to dismember each other!! The scene was reminiscent of a schoolyard scrap with eager bystanders egging on the combatants. It all got very nasty and the birds continued the fight on and off for a good half hour or more. Here are a few photos of the action:

One onlooker gives a bit of vocal encouragement.

The Neck-lock

The Wing-grab,
Note the nasty wound below the eye of the right hand bird.

The Tug-o-War
The right hand bird showing a nasty wound behind the bill.
Be warned! The next one (the eye gouge) isn't for the squeamish.

EEHEW!! Ouch!

A quick look along the river at around 2:30 revealed 'Derek the Dark One' (Iceland Gull, in case you've not been paying attention or haven't read my blog before) amongst the multitude of Herring Gulls.

A Warning: If you happen to spot an abandoned Guinea Pig on your travels, try not to be a soft-hearted sucker like me, just pretend you haven't seen it. Bramble is, as I type this, languishing at the vets in Axminster after having extensive dental treatment under anesthetic. I found out to my cost that the previous owner dumped him because he has a severe malocclusion problem, meaning his teeth are misaligned and do not wear down. They have become so overgrown that he can't eat, hence the treatment. He was struggling to recover from the sedation this afternoon and so had to stay at the vets overnight. I can't bear to think about what it's going to cost!! The vet's warned me that the prognosis is in fact poor and that he will probably ultimately have to be euthanased. I felt compelled to at least give him a chance though, which is more than his previous owners could do. I think leaving him to die in the countryside instead of taking him to the vets to be humanely killed was simply a cowardly shirking of responsibility.

A New Iceland Gull...Possibly?

I haven't seen 'much to write home about'* over the last few days, the cold northerly wind keeping me inside a great deal. I did venture up to Trinity Hill on Sunday morning and by doing so missed out on the spectacle of 2000 or so masochists running around a large part of our house, (The Grizzly- See Gav's Blog for full description) I distinctly remember the floor vibrating as they thundered past last year! I was a bit worried about the integrity of the plaster, so thought it best to employ the old out of sight out of mind tactic. Trinity Hill was as lovely as always, trees, heather, wind, trees and trees. It looks a bit like this:

Just Heavenly...Well Rex likes it at least (note the trees!)

It wasn't all trees and wind though I did manage to see a small flock of Crossbills on two separate occasions, once in flight over this clearing (the one pictured above that is). There were six of them and they were all females/youngsters. I thought I'd seen exactly which tree they'd landed in but on getting there they were nowhere to be seen. I did get a superb view of a Woodcock though, which Rex discovered underneath a fallen tree, he flushed it and it flew right past me just a couple of feet away! Steve and I saw another Woodcock there today and Steve was quite relieved to hear the Crossbills 'chupping' too, (I'd wandered off and missed them) meaning he probably only has to visit once more this year to see Nightjar and feed the midges!


The bird of the day was another Iceland Gull which Steve spotted by the Tram Sheds, it was a light one and looked like it might, just possibly, be NEW. It didn't look like Shirley or Martin but could have been Norman. (or without the anthropomorphism, it didn't look like the light one or the other light one but could have been the OTHER light one ).

These two photos will make it all 'as clear as mud' I'm sure:

New or Norm?

Here's a better view. I'm pleased with this photo, one of my better efforts I think. A really lovely looking specimen too!

Later on I bumped into Gav. He was looking at an Iceland Gull, "Is it new?" I asked. He replied " No, it's Derek" and so it was. Derek was on the tram shed roof, the new one had gone. After talking about the finer points of Iceland Gull ID for a while we decided to go to Colyford Common and look for a Sand Martin. Although I'm pretty sure we must have been there by 17:45 when Steve saw two of them fly up river, we didn't see them, not even with the aid of four eyes, two sets of bins and two scopes. Perhaps some of our optical equipment is past it's best!! :( We got the Little Egret total of 27 correct though, so at least we can still count.

The resident Barn Owl was still visible in it's nestbox, and as the evening wore on it kindly emerged and sat just outside the entrance, my second patch yeartick in as many days, ( the other being Crossbill of course.)

Here's another picture I took yesterday, when I saw this it made me smile because I remembered when we visited the Blue Cross animal shelter and picked out Rex ( we took an instant liking to him because he looked like a shredded wheat on legs). The staff there were a bit concerned that he wouldn't be able to get along with cats.

Au Contraire Blue Cross, Au Contraire!!

* This idiom is totally inappropriate because even if I saw a Caspian Tern and ' wrote home' about it, as it were. No one would give a monkey's. They'd say " A Caspian what? Oh, a Caspian Tern, what's a Tern?"