A cold, getting cold and birding

16 January

I'm sorry for missing yesterday my friends, all down to feeling very, very poorly. Nothing serious just a worsening of the head cold that as per normal laid me out yet again. We were up and about by 9 o'clock but I was totally wasted. I sat and just couldn't get comfortable because my back and the back of my legs and arms felt as if I had a mild sunburn over the whole area. I kept nodding off again and couldn't concentrate on anything at all. I gave up and went back to bed for a few hours and felt a lot better after it. Today I'm still a bit stuffy in the head but a lot better. Yes, I know, I'm wuzz ... ... ...

Tonight bird club meeting night and I'm please to be feeling a lot better so that I can get back there. I do miss it but stopped going because either health reason or because of forgetting what date it was on. That was three years ago so this year I shall make another effort to keep on going.

Our bird list for year stands at a miserly 35. A Yahoo group I subscribe to has one member at 98 already, but he does live in North Norfolk and manages to get out a lot more than we do. And yet I'm not entirely sure that that is the main reason we don't see so many. Take last Saturday for example; we missed seeing the yellow legged gull, the Mediterranean gull and the smew, all out on the water. We also didn't see another five or six of the smaller birds in the trees and bushes around the place. The thing is, when you are on a scooter in the cold, you get even colder the long you sit. So spending time to sit and just look and wait for what's about to appear, and they do at some time, is just not advisable for us. We still have a good day out and about when we go but I wish we were able to see more birds.

The other issue with birding that has been on-going is that of bird photography. We have here a Nikon 65mm scope, a Nikon Coolpix 5100 camera and the adaptor to do digi-scooping. We do have our Sony gear and we get some good results from it. However, the scoop would also have worked well for finding those birds we missing on the water last Saturday. The problem is that the scoop and tripod is heavy to lug about. See, I do wish I was fit and healthy.

And seeing as we are talking birding ... 

A golden eye from last Saturday.

Our man of words, The Sage has spoken ...

 Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in my front garden, my neighbours stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog.

During our friendly conversation I asked their little girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said she wanted to be Prime Minister someday.
Both of her parents, Labour Party members, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?"
She replied... "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."
Her parents beamed with pride!
"Wow...what a worthy goal!" I said. "But you don't have to wait until you're Prime Minister to do that!" I told her.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
So I told her, "You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull out the weeds, and trim my hedge, and I'll pay you £50. Then you can go over to the shop, where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the
£50 to use toward food and a new house."
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the £50?"
I said, "Welcome to the Conservative Party."
Her parents aren't speaking to me anymore.