NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

A few posts ago there was a sneak preview of my latest daubing, and today it was completed. I could have carried on adding layers, tweaking leaves and embellishing the owl, but there came a point where enough was enough. My next piece is a long-promised picture for my sister-in-law. She might just get it by 2017... Meanwhile, down at Dungeness, the dust has settled. The Acadian (for that is almost certainly what it was) Flycatcher remained until dusk on its day of discovery, but decided to move on (or succumb to the efforts of its journey) and has not been seen since. BBC film crews have been down to obtain footage for the regional news, newspapers have run sidebar stories about the 'first for Britain' and Martin Casemore has no doubt been bemused by his current celebrity status. It couldn't have happened to a more dedicated and unassuming bloke - I just hope that some of his magic dust comes my way when I'm down there later in the autumn. Part of the romantic in...

Only a couple of posts ago  I laid bare my Dungeness bird list on the back of my reconnection with the shingle peninsula. Although there have been 'Dungeness ticks' that I could have gone for in recent months, they have either not been terribly rare or highly mobile. So there really hasn't been the need or the opportunity to do so. Listing can be a corrosive infliction. If taken too seriously you can become irrational, tetchy and ultimately unfulfilled. It's all OK when the listing behaves itself, and you connect with all the possible targets, in that case life is brilliant. But when you dip, things can go dark. I wondered how I would react when a real stonker turned up at Dungeness. Well, at 10.00hrs this morning I found out... "Dungeness mega. Empidonax Flycatcher at the fishing boats now. Showing well" That little gem of information appeared on Twitter via Martin Casemore. I took it all in with more than a little wonder and a feeling of pleasure for the...