Got the car back last night so decided to give it a good road test and go see the Black throated Thrush at Newholm. I've seen a few of these before and know they can often take up residence in gardens a bit Blackbird like really, I didn't expect this thing to be quite so approachable though, a bit worrying when you see what's lurking in it's favourite garden! Not to worry though the cat belongs to Dave the bloke who found the bird so hopefully he'll keep an eye on things.

Don't panic the rusty tones to the undertail is caused by reflection from the apples!

Some of these shots were taken down to about 15 feet as the bird flew in and landed right in front of us, the snedge helped with shutter speeds but I can only wander how good they would have been if there'd been any sun. Anyway pretty pleased with them whatever and got the year off to a nice start, rare Thrushes are few and far between.

Feckin Car!

Managed to get it stuck in the snedge the other day which meant I had to ring my mate Paul to come pull me out with his Range Rover. Although this got me driving again it also means I'll never hear the end of it. I give him loads of grief for having such a ridiculous car, it really is massive does about 3 gallons to the mile and all he does is go to Elland road in it a couple of times a month! So he's gonna take every opportunity to give me stick about needing it to help me out.

Things got a lot worse when on Wed morning I set off to North Cave to look for Barn Owl and the clutch went. I got it to the garage and kept my fingers crossed. Should have crossed more, bastard thing cost me £760 to sort out. To be fair I should have expected it what with the horses tied up outside and the saloon doors into the office!

So Thurs I was without a car and had a bit of work to do locally so asked Paul if I could borrow his van. Turns out he was using it that day but said I could borrow the Rover. Oh god twice in a week I'd needed it, Friday night is not gonna be pleasant!

It's a weird thing driving round in one of these, they really are huge but don't feel it somehow. You do get a load of looks though, other motorists, cops women pushing prams, everybody looks at it. You quickly start to get a bit paranoid, within about 5 minutes I was shouting 'what you fucking looking at' to every other person in East Yorks. It was suggested the coppers checking it out might have thought I'd nicked it! As if, I'd nick something with a bit of poke like an EVO if I was off to do a bit of joyriding.

It's really not my style of transport at all but to be fair to it, it's a very impressive piece of kit. It's got a button for everything, heated seats, heated steering wheel! cameras to see where your going, wing mirrors that angle down when your reversing and best of all a button that lowers the suspension so it's easier to get in and out and remove your waitrose bags from the boot! RIDICULOUS.

Another side effect is you quickly think you really do own the road, well I think that anyway but it's magnified in this thing. I found myself shouting a lot more at other cars that waned to use the same roads as me, especially any 4x4 Audi's or BM's 'get a proper four wheel drive losers'!!!

Been a while since my last post, but then again I've not had the chance to go birding. Got an awful bug between xmas and new year and lost shit loads of weight with it, didn't even go out on new years eve I'd been that rough.

Since then I've been working a bit and only managed 1 day at Hornsea and a couple of checks of the pits round Brandesburton, which produced nothing!

I did have an hour the other day trying to get some pics of Bullfinch but the light was a bit crap despite loads of snedge on the ground. These are the best I could manage.