Aurora borealis: <b>Guest photo gallery#2

May 30, 2005

Guest photo gallery#2 - birds

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Here goes with the second of the Guest Galleries, once again courtesy of the hugely generous Sean. A nice smattering of common, scarce and rare British birds - especial highlights for me being the Cirl Bunting and the front shot of Great Grey Shrike, but there's something here for everyone. Contact Sean to enquire about these or any other of his many images via aurora.borealis AT swarovskibirding.com

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Sean is of course the jammy bastard who got the opportunity to go and take superlative photos of the Belted Kingfisher only a few miles from home. Don't we all wish birds of that calibre turned up on our local patches? Not that I can complain on the basis of the past 18 months birding on our island.

On the subject of which, a very unsatisfying weekend. Last year we had south-easterlies over the weekend of JL's birthday, culminating in our female Sardinian Warbler. This year however the wind was a spiteful north-easterly, bringing only foul weather and general misery. I tried to dig the first of the vegetable plots in the lower tree yard on Saturday morning, and managed a few hours of painful slog until the driving sleet forced me indoors to an early bath. At least JL's birthday do in the evening helped ease the aches of muscles unused to such abuse, employing the tried and tested medicine of beer and whisky. Yesterday's weather was no better, so I stuck to indoors work on the conservatory. Today is an improvement being dry and sunny, so I suppose tonight will involve another spell of digging. Oh joy. It'll all be worth it when the first mega turns up in the tattie patch!

And finally today... Happy 40th birthday, JL!

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