yorkslister

These next two are for Jack!

I've never seen an adult male Rough Leg before so this was a really nice bird to catch up with. Amazing how dark it looked with the head and breast merging into the underwing covs and mottled belly. When seen sat it was striking how big the shoulders and head looked compared to Common Buzzard, a right monster of a bird.

After the rough leg which was nice cos we could watch it from the car Jim made us get out and walk round a big wood where you apparently get some birds. We didn't, and it was freezing, more freezing than I've ever been even with 3 pairs of good gloves on my hands were cold after about 5 seconds. It was also the quietest wood I've ever been in, it took ages to find the first bird, a Marsh Tit I think, I can't be sure cos my eyes had frozen and I couldn't see! We also saw Crested Tit and Short toed Tree but none of them showed very well they were all moving around a lot frantically looking for grub. It was below minus 5 with a wind chill that must have been minus 25.

Right then here's the good stuff.......

Nice 2nd cal Caspian

And a few of a smart Mich.

The tip here is fantastic the rubbish is all dumped on a concrete area surrounded by walls. The Gulls just sit on the walls waiting for the trucks to move off then it's chaos. There is a bank adjacent to this tipping area you can stand on, the views are incredible as the birds are only 20-30 metres away. If it hadn't been so cold my hands would have been a bit steadier and I might have got more sharp pics. Although on the other hand it might have been the 8% grog the night before!! No on second thoughts it was the cold, Jim bottled out and went to sit in the car for the last hour pretending to be tired, think he lived down south for too long.

In the evening Remke cooked us a traditional dutch dish of malaysian curried rice or something! Which was really good and we went to a pub quiz, which was in Dutch! despite the obvious handicaps of Jim, who's been learning Dutch for about 18 months, and me, who doesn't speak a word of it, we came second by one point!!!