Aurora borealis: A few of my favourite things

May 24, 2005

A few of my favourite things

Aurora header.jpg

(NB - for those looking for the Little Auk / Gyr Falcon image - click here)

Nice conditions yesterday afternoon - a light south-easterly and persistent showers. Of course, I was at work and in no position to take advantage of this, and had to resign myself to hoping anything good would stick around until the late afternoon and my return home.

We'd asked JL to come by the house and let the dogs out for a pee at lunchtime, as we were both out... so it was ironic that at the foot of the drive he found a nice bright Icterine Warbler, and then outside the conservatory window a Bluethroat perched on the wall... I missed the Bluethroat he found last year on our manure-heap, so wasn't really expecting to see this one either.

By the time I'd got home JL had trapped a second, less well-marked Icterine, but hadn't relocated the elusive Bluethroat. B let me have a quick look at the Icky before he released it, and JL and I relocated the Bluethroat mooching around my compost heap. Sadly not a nice sparkling spring male - instead a rather scrotty female, which promptly matched it's behaviour to it's rather dingy looks when it went into the dog run and started to pick around the day's crop of dog shit. Nice. Anyway, a Bluethroat's a Bluethroat, and just sounds satisfyingly exotic even when the reality is less prosaic.

Enthused, got up early this morning in the hope of a Red-backed Shrike or similar. (Trumpeter Finch... Oh please please please...) As is usual when I make an effort to haul myself out of bed at an ungodly early hour, I found bugger all.

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