February panorama

Fifty shades of rock

9th February 2018

 

 

 

 

When panning for a jolly good day out, one must always remember to send out a reminder: sorry Lynn but you were with us in our hearts.  Meeting at around 1215ish, we topped up our vitamin D with a quick dose of February sun and headed down towards the National Stone Centre for our first refreshment of the day.

 

What happens when the rock is full?

 

 

With glorious blue skies, sunshine, rocky outcrops and vistas in the offing, we could have been anywhere in the world.  However, this outstanding landscape is literally on the doorstep of a couple of lucky babes and today offered a special, physical reminder of many of the places we have been to over the last few years together.  Infact, this place is good that Don Quixote went off-piste from his adventures in Spain…

 

Proof!

 

Okay, enough of the waxing lyrical and back to normality. Whilst waiting for Pam to arrive,  Jo, Maggie, Alison and the Helens’ chatted about the varying skills we have (or not) in our ability to learn a different  language.  And thanks to Alison, we can now all remember the german word for an underwater flying parrot:  Papageientaucher.  But, how the auk will we remember that she was talking about a puffin!  Unfortunately,  Betty was a bit too keen to teach us yapping for ‘I am bored and should have had a walk first’ so her lesson ended abruptly with a bit of ‘time out’ on the naughty step in the blue van.

 

So, why was Pam late? It seems that Pam does not appear to own her own name and needs her man’s name to help her get through a bit of security! Oh dear, what did the suffragettes ever do for us? Never mind Pam, we are right behind you, but probably not chaining ourselves to a railing just yet.   

 

An underwhelming lunch, but as Helen J pointed out, there would have been a bit more left-over had we all been served her recent experiment with her home-made consommé

 

We’ll try the cakes next time

 

We decided against the exhibition in favour of our walk, but these babes couldn’t resist a bit of retail therapy.

 

What a  pair of gems

 

With Betty now forgiven  we set off on our trail towards Black Rocks

 

 

 

But it wasn’t long before she was up to mischief and stole a ball from another dog!  Extracting this was like trying to get money out of a rock, but fortunately the other owner was skilled in naughty dogs’ playing ball and we all now know that…

 

Twist and pull works best!

 

Yeah… twist and pull does work best!

 

 

A burst of energy led us uphill for views of local stunt man, who adds a new move to the twist and pull….

 

Hop, twist and pull out…

 

‘cos the are babes about!

 

And whilst we haven’t yet added a visit to this quarry as one of our days’ out, this photo marks the start of some of our memories elsewhere

The quarry…

 

Crich

 

Hardwick Hall and Teversal

 

Carsington; a winter favourite

 

 

And whilst we haven’t visited Breedon-on-the-hill together, we know that Calke is close by…

 

Jo looked for her house

 

 

Whilst Pam found hers

 

And Betty looked wistfully at Pam’s stick…

 

With the sun on our backs  we headed back with exchanges of advice about money-saving tips: aldi vs lidl (again), our next holidays  and even started a new topic on our family trees and how far back some of us have got.  Whilst we can’t, yet, compete with the 30 million year old local history, finding out information about family from the 1600s, is still pretty impressive.  

 

An underwhelming birdlist of:

Great tit

Jay (first view this year)

Jackdaw

Long-tailed tits (first for this year)

Magpie

Sparrows (the copper beech variety)

Woodpigeon

And Alison saw a goldcrest in her garden this morning. 

 

Swaddling babe of de wood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January Murmurs

Murmurs at Attenborough

January 19th

 

On a perfect sunny but cold January morning five babes met at  Attenborough full of anticipation about what we might spot. Two Helens and Jo arrived early(eager to comply with the schedule so carefully arranged by Helen J)with Maggie and Pam not far behind.

 

Aye up me duck

 

 Sadly Alison had to go to the vets followed by a trip to watch Derby County fail to score against the mighty Bristol City so wasn't able to join us and Lynn also had a busy day but we all sent her virtual hugs.

 

Equipment check

 

All in working order

 

If you look through the telescope Jo you might be able to see a swan!

 

Yes - it's a swan with a goose on its head!

 

After checking out the birds around the visitor centre and a lesson on the difference between a stock dove and a pigeon, the next stop was the café for a warming bowl of soup and a good catch up.

After checking with the centre staff Helen J's carefully laid plans were thrown into disarray when we discovered that the main car park gates are closed at 5pm and as the main aim of our afternoon was to try and catch the starling murmuration we had to have a quick rethink as we didn't fancy getting locked in for the night.

 

                       They're behind you...

 

Fuelled by soup and coffee and having made full use of the facilities we set off to see what we could see.

 

Look - it's over there.....

 

Oh - there it is....

 

Oh - they are flying away - perhaps we are too noisy...

 

A much needed rest after all that spotting

 

What a beauty - definitely next years Christmas card!

 

On entering the bird hide there was much excitement - not for the reasons some of us might anticipate - but the elusive and secretive water rail had been spotted

 

Can you spot the water rail?

 

Is this him?

....or this?

 

We all kept unnaturally quiet so as not to disturb the serious twitchers and the water rail and we did all manage to spot him in the end, if only he was a bit more flamboyant he would be easier to identify.

 

You can always rely on a heron to pose for a photograph

 

The red hatted Kenworthy also poses very nicely.

 

For a moment it was just like James Norton was there with us!

 

Not up to Pam's photographic standard but I think the bullfinch was bird of the day.

 

With a good haul of birds spotted we made our way back to the car park and drove down to Beeston Marina to get ourselves in prime position for the much anticipated murmuration.

 

Best foot forwards...

 

 

Quick look - a new teashop - lets get in there before it closes!

 

Just checking that it really was a water rail...

 

The sun was just starting to set as we got to the marina but we decided that there is always time for a quick cup of tea. Pam replaced her batteries and was soon powered up for the next stage and we headed down to where we hoped to be able to get a good view of the starlings coming in to roost.

 

It took us a while to find our spot but we were reassured by the presence of other slightly mad people.

 

It got darker and darker.....

 

and darker.....

 

but eventually they did arrive

 

It seems that we weren't in quite the right place after all and that the show was much better over near the visitor centre  you would think those pesky starlings would have realised all the planning that we had put in but at least we did see a bit of a murmur so were able to head home happy after a lovely day.

 

This is what we had hoped to see:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPN9JXS-Odg

 

And finally our bird list for the day:

 

blackbird

blackheaded gull (raft of 107ish!)

blue tit

bullfinch

canada goose

collared dove

coot

cormorant

crow

dunnock

water rail (GB first and our target bird for the last two years!)

eygyptian goose

gadwall

goldeneye

goosander

great crested grebe

great tit

grey heron

greylag goose

jackdaw

kestrel

lapwing

lesser black backed gull (apparently a GB first??!, clearly seen, but not recorded)

little grebe

magpie

mallard

moorhen

mute swan

robin

house sparrow ( or a new species.. a ‘bush sparrow’!)

starling

stock dove (GB first)

teal

tufted duck

wigeon

wood pigeon

 

36 in total, a good start to the year.  Our running total since records began is now 96.. getting close to our century! 

Unfortunately Jo, whilst you may have seen a gull with yellow legs, it was a lesser black backed gull, which does have yellow legs, so, sort of right. 

A practice murmuration it was, so will have to try again for the full starling monty!

Our new target bird has been set by Maggie: a bittern, but that will probably be too boring for one of our gelly birders