Quintus

The avocets have returned, always a lovely sight. For the first picture, look at the sheldrake on the left then imagine the Benny Hill chase music...

We had a great day for birds yesterday - woke up to a spotted woodpecker drumming in the garden, went out to snap it but found a treecreeper instead. In the afternoon we walked by the estuary and saw a herd of probably a hundred deer, a lovely female stonechat and a huge flock of knots, plus all the usual egrets, redshanks etc. Flurry of pics to follow below...

Knots Landing...

On 14/02/2021 at 13:56, Angela said:

And as you can see from my profile photo, I am still waiting for "Francesca da Rimini", the ballet.  😍

 Thanks for reminding me of this clip, which deserves an outing in this thread..

Bit of an odd draw for the AO - nearly all the big names are in the bottom half, with top half local Ash Barty thereby pretty much guaranteed a place in the final!  My favourite players keep having to play each other, which is reducing my chances of having anyone to cheer for in the final..  I'd be happy enough with Halep or Osaka taking this.

Jan, your robin has a flat-top haircut 😆

Found this bizarre critter on the beach at Felixstowe this morning and popped it back in the surf - we’d seen brittle stars on Winterwatch recently but never in real life before. 
 

Click brittle star video here

It was a bit gloomy on the common today, but I did startle a couple of does from the bracken just in front of me. I'm always amazed at how sizeable animals can just become invisible..

24 minutes ago, zxDaveM said:

sometimes, you don't have to go far from home to see nature. Sometimes you don't even need to leave the kitchen table! Just been watching a male Sparrowhawk sitting on the crown of the roof of the house opposite me. No wonder all the sparrows gone missing!

Funny you should say that... this morning I was looking out of the bedroom window while shaving, and this ball of fury suddenly landed in front of me. Two male sparrowhawks trying to shred each other. I thought one had snuffed it when the other 'mantled' but they then broke up and flew off

Our trailcam came up trumps last night - the elusive woodpecker we've named Moby Pecker, caught in the act of destroying one of our trees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR0c7rmhasSmt_fU8W2uILMvLHIRbUUEpr1JT_IACg11tLWlT3LQQhcGNi4&v=8vAzPON8Mhs&feature=youtu.be

Couple of pics from this morning - the woodpecker is doing a real number on one of our trees, with four or five branches felled so far.  Spotted the Egyptian geese in a field across the road with a rain-flooded corner; yesterday there was a heron there fruitlessly looking for fish. 

14 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

An alternative art installation on the beach this morning.

 

budget cuts in the UK Space Agency?

Good to see Sainsbury's are joining in. Last time I went there, a family of five was shopping together and only the mother wore a mask. Perhaps Olympic athletes get an exemption, as they were all wearing tracksuits... 

8 hours ago, JohnS said:

Rather hoping the hide is in addition to Father Christmas accepting your business case for a longer camera lens. 

Yes, the COO approved the business case and I got myself a secondhand 200-500 and 1.4x converter.  Still finding I need to get close however, hence the hide. The COO might be surprised to see the hide appear without approval , so I'm hoping it really is well camouflaged and she never notices it!

Here's the new lens in action...

On our last trip to Minsmere before the lockdown (can't travel that far now), we saw nothing much of interest - but then returned to find about thirty redwings in the garden.  I've just ordered a pop-up hide so that I can lurk in the garden and get close to some of our regulars.  I've just repurposed the Xmas tree with fat-ball decorations and it's getting its first visitors..

Guardian reviews generally draw a few eye-rolls from me, as does this, but she's right about the overall warmth (btw my eyes rolled again at the WSJ review demanding more tension, anxiety and drama). We're really enjoying this series, and admiring the talent, personableness and determination of the young dancers. We just watched the episode where the youngsters come together for the first time in rehearsal with the principals - and it was both amusing and touching to see how the children's wide-eyed adulation of Megan Fairchild made them forget to actually move rather than just gaze at her dancing... There are glimpses of what the parents also have to bring to the table for these kids to succeed, and it would be interesting to see more on how the wide range of domestic financial situations depicted may affect the dancers' opportunities. The style of presentation is very laid back, but it's edited in a way that gives opportunity to read between the lines with little pauses, looks between parents etc. Well worth a watch.

I've been reading any number of friends' summaries of how awful 2020 has been, all horribly familiar.  We must all however also have taken a few positive things out of months of enforced leisure, or learnt something new (see my favourite meme of the year below)..   We discovered a host of local wildlife reserves that somehow we'd overlooked, and while we'd always been walkers, learnt how to see more wildlife rather than simply charge round a circuit.  I also rediscovered literature after a couple of years' laziness - in the summer I re-read all of Shakespeare's plays and as many Canterbury Tales as I could get my hands on, and loved that time (plus getting secondhand copies of the latter brought the secondary amusement of reading other people's school notes!).  Among the hours spent 'completing Netflix' there have been some gems too.

What positives did you get out of the year?

Rudolf performs all his anguished pas de deux wearing the ass's head from Midsummer Night's Dream..

Nutcracker soldiers put in a shift in the munitions factory in Dust..

Myrtha raises Giselle from the dead by means of Widow Simone's clog dance..

I saw a nice nuthatch and my first bearded tits on my last visit to Minsmere, but this chap on the adjacent cafe table was getting a bit impatient with my camera shenanigans.

6 minutes ago, alison said:

Remembered this when I got in about 6.30 - then forgot about it for a couple of hours

It's still up on Youtube to watch - I forgot too then skimmed through just watching the dancing segments.  Osipova was very good, despite the most unflattering costume I've seen in a while.

That's one hench ram John, he thinks he's a lion!   I'd been for a river walk a couple of days ago (saw a seal but not much else) and on the way back stopped on a whim at a common I'd often passed.  Suddenly two beautiful fallow deer popped out of the scrub and bounced across my path. Managed to grab the shot below, though had the deer been more courteous it would have paused and let me increase my ISO speed.  Shortly after, a small dog in a red coat appeared, which explained their flight. Never did see that dog's owner!

We were wandering round Dunwich heath a few days ago and saw a rather parrot-like silhouette atop a fir tree. It turned out to be a crossbill, a bird I've never seen before.  Bizarre looking beast, like a chaffinch that's flown face first into a window

I'v been trying to get a decent pic of a long-tailed tit for ages, but they are very mobile little blighters. Finally got this one today; I do think they have very cute faces!

It's part of the unfortunate trend towards identitarian politics, putting people in outdated little boxes of geography, class, education, race, religion etc and trying to generalise their behaviour accordingly to try and align whole blocks of votes. We're all individuals (apart from that Life of Brian character who denied it), and our society is more open, mobile and heterogeneous than ever before.  I grew up on a council estate but went to private school, I love art, poetry and ballet but have a karate black belt, I listen to both classical music and punk, grew up in a frankly racist environment but have a mixed race and culture family, just watched a livestream of Bharatanatyam and Orissi dance from the Nehru centre but will flop out in front of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here later, etc etc.  What demographic box should I get in, Mr Berry?

p.s. I absolutely draw the line at football though - bores the pants off me!

....but they won't let him join the heavenly choir!

My eldest son just got me RSPB membership as an early Xmas present; found this little chap at Minsmere this morning :)