Not quite yet


What's at the end of that rainbow then? A Waxwing invasion? More Hawfinches? An Ivory Gull? Or, heaven forbid, a Wallcreeper? December is a strange month for me. I cannot help but take my foot off the pedal a bit. Fewer plants to find. There are moths on the wing still, but the garden MV is not at its most productive. And as for the birds, it can be a great time, particularly if the weather takes a turn for the worse, but I find myself starting to 'rest up' for the festive season and preparing for the start of the new (2019) campaign. Looking back at the year just gone becomes a pastime, one that most bloggers turn into the dreaded 'Review of the Year'. Yes, that is coming, but not quite yet.

Comments

Ric said…
Steve, there cannot be many like you who can put a name to just about every living thing that crosses your path.
I can do an ok job of that myself, but at the other end of the scale are those whose knowledge of the natural world around them is so lacking, it's breath taking.
Sad to say, it's that almost universal ignorance that is the biggest danger to our environment today.
We see the changes over time.
The masses see nothing apart from the next meal.
3 December 2018 at 08:02
Steve Gale said…
Ric, thank you for the kind and thought-provoking words. I may well put a name to everything, but that doesn't mean that those names are all correct!!
3 December 2018 at 09:27
Ric said…
Steve, we at least try to engage in the world around us.
I saw a family out for a walk the other day and every one of them (four) had their heads down staring into a phone.
The wild life reserve they were in may as well not have existed.
5 December 2018 at 07:17
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more