BTO Open Day

Saturday, 5 August 2006. Gorgeous weather for the BTO Open Day at the Nunnery in Thetford. I arrived early, walked round the grounds and admired four Egyptian Geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca), but not much else, although I am always struck by how beautiful the grounds are at the Nunnery. You really must pay it a visit one day. As to the foxgeese (alopex = fox, chen = goose), I am all in favour of colourful introductions, ceteris paribus, and am not sniffy about Mandarin Duck either (v.i)

The events at the BTO Open Day were not quite exciting enough to cause me to send out a come-hither message, although the toasted sandwiches were damned good. The new Chris Mead Library is very impressive, lots of tempting books in a delicious new building. Well, not to be grudging, there were also excellent displays of the BTO's work, censusing, surveys, nest recording, etc.

Mostly it was, as these things usually are, a good opportunity to meet old friends. I talked Barn Owls, Swifts and Orioles - of course - and also learned a lot about monitoring nest activity by means of cameras, thanks to a dynamic couple from Devon who deal in this stuff. Young and energetic, good guys, their brilliant company is called Eco-Watch. Lang may their lum reek..

I am always struck by the number of white-bearded old scrotes at these events, and have to remind myself that I am now one of them. Eheu fugaces!

The heat got to me by early afternoon, so I came home via the traffic jam on the A11 to a plate of chicken goujons with tartare sauce (crazy combination, but it was all I could find).

All this is really just an excuse to post pictures of Egyptian Goose and Mandarin Duck of course. There are only two species in the Aix genus: Mandarin (Aix galericulata) and the Carolina Wood Duck (Aix sponsa). The Mandarin is now under threat in its native China, so all the feral populations, resulting from escapes from collections, are now of conservation importance. But this is really just an excuse to post a picture of a Wood Duck as well. :-)