It's grey and wet... but I'll try and blog something!

Leaden grey skies, peeing down with rain. A day for not for going far. Took enough time to get out of bed and I'm not sure it even got light today.

I can only imagine what it was like queuing hoping to see a dove somewhere down south in this weather after a good drive (and paying a fiver for the priveledge of hoping I might see it!), listening to the tedious conversation of experts in the field of birds they haven't seen as they curse others for failing to identify birds they would like to have seen, albeit ones they couldn't actually manage to identify themselves! Not quite turned my back on twitching... the birds are good, just the 'clientelle' that seem to turn up in habitats frequented by rare birds seem to spoil it nowadays!

I guess the hobby of birdwatching and twitching has become too accessible and is well marketed. Or maybe it is me that is past my sell by date and I'm doing it all wrong? Could I be old school???

So it was 5 hours or so sat overlooking D res in the hope of seeing something interesting. Scary to think a Little Egret might be bird of the day! Fortunately it didn't appear, nor did many gulls! Two Lesser Black-backed Gulls for all that looking hardly meant it was time well spent as Doug Fairweather and me shivered away. A group of 6 Goosanders roosted at dusk, and a flock of Siskins occasionally bounced west over the res and then bounced back east into D wood several times during the afternoon.

A least we can post a picture... some Witches Butter was photographed at Castle Howard last Sunday by Doug Fairweather.



Moving further afield, our Scotland reporter to the blog (remember his Gyr last year?) recorded Golden Eagles sat on rabbits, some cracking looking Red-breasted Mergansers and Ravens in the Invergordon area. Not bad for a trainspotter!