First meeting of the working day

Wildlife encounters have been a bit weekend-orientated recently. I've been too caught up in the hustle and bustle of the weekday travelling, back and forth, to work, not to mention the hurly-burly of office/workshop life in a small company.

So it was a real joy, this morning, whilst sat at my desk waiting for my computer to boot up, to hear birdsong close by. A song that was at odds with our preoccupation with the material world, that hinted at gentler, less stressful times, generally gave the impression that the singer was perfectly happy in his space and proclaimed that the listener should jolly well cheer up because it was a lovely day.

Initial investigations led to the small window in the door at the rear of the room, through which I could see a Pied Wagtail sat on the safety railing beyond. It was a doubly pleasant surprise as I had only just entered the office through this door, without the merest hint of birdy trillyness in evidence. Not only that, your average Wagtail call is a fairly brief affair, but this fellow was stringing together and repeating all the notes he could think of. He was probably a jazz aficionado in another life.

I'm afraid that the grubbiness of the window, the inadequacies of my phone camera and yours truly on the buttons, couldn't do this little scene justice. But it was a glorious sound for a brisk Autumnal morning and my new-found good mood was only slightly dented by the return to emails, phone calls, meetings and reports.

It might be cold out here, but my Excel spreadsheet hasn't just crashed.

Tringonometry

Taking advantage of today's relatively benign weather, our lass and I went for a trog around Tring reservoirs. She, armed with my old camera, and me with my new one.

Predictably, mine weren't the best shots, but I didn't mind too much (blatant lie) as it proves the old adage, "It's not how big it is, it's what you do with it."

As it turned out, the "do" in this case was stick it in a duck's face!

Love a duck

Red One-footed falcon

Oo you lookin' at?

Gull's aloft

Coot of many colours... ok, just two

Pochard being all pochardy

Motorway list

Being a "local patch" birder, it's easy to define that patch as wherever I happen to be. So when I had to journey from Northamptonshire to Manchester this week and found myself in a vehicle sans cd player, one particular option presented itself.

Rather than listen to pop music, inane babble or folk arguing on the radio, I used the motorway network as my birding patch:

M1 J15a -J19   A solitary kestrel. Oddly I didn't see another of these "typical" motorway birds all day.

M6 J1 - J4   A big flock of rooks and jackdaws, wheeling over the traffic. Enjoying the turbulent air of a gusty Autumn day.

M6 Toll   A flock of lapwing making heavy weather of the er... heavy weather. Then, further along, a buzzard hanging in the wind like an enormous kestrel, working the speeding air to remain motionless in space.

M6 J12 - J14    A dozen Canada Geese lift from the flood plain on one side of the motorway and somehow make it over the roofs of the passing vehicles to the other side. Crazy birds!

M6 J19    Two more buzzards. One flying low over the embankment for the slip road, another sat on a fence watching the ground intently.

Lunch in town in the Snipe Retail Park, which sadly didn't live up to its name.

M6 J19 - J15   A huge rounded shadow looms out of the increasing gloom, and at first I thought it was an owl, but it turned out to be a heron.

M6 Stafford services   Fairly obligatory, this one, a bunch of Pied Wagtails in the car park.

M6 J14 - J12   Those pesky Canada Geese again! Struggling into the breeze, back across the carriageways.

Not the best day's birding I've ever had, but when you're stuck behind the wheel for 6 hours, the odd avian sighting does lift the heart.