Saturday, March 31, 2012

Sunday, March 18, 2012

TRAVELLER



I am grateful to my colleague  Dick Newell for the following record of a Lesser Black-backed Gull, a well-travelled and well-recorded bird if ever there was one:
red SDJ                 (metal ring GA37303)
14/07/2002         Orford Beach, Orfordness, Suffolk  -  RINGED AS PULLUS
01/10/2002         Tostock, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
10/01/2003         Agadir   MOROCCO  30.26N  09.36W
01/07/2004         Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk,
22/10/2004         Westkapelle, Walcheren, Zeeland, NETHERLANDS   51.32N  03.26E
31/03/2005         Gijon, Asturias, SPAIN   43.32N  05.38W
03/02/2006         Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire
18/09/2007         Earsham, Norfolk
17/01/2010         Drinkstone, Suffolk
06/02/2012         Milton tip, near Cambridge
Whenever I see small flocks of this species of gull in the field below mine, I wonder how many have a similar story to tell?

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Box therapy

I must be feeling better, because I have gone back to one of my old habits: making nestboxes. The one on the grass is an indoor Barn Owl box, the other two are Kestrel boxes. The rustic couple have no significance except to add a splash of colour to an otherwise very boring photograph. You can sneer, but just wait till I take a pic of the boxes in the summer, bursting with baby owls and kestrels.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Coalition For Marriage

It probably wasn't Queen Victoria who expressed her opposition to homosexual activity on the grounds that, if done in public, it would frighten the horses, but the sentiment seems appropriate to me. It seems appropriate to me, also, that we should keep things simple, which is why, uncharacteristically perhaps, I have signed the petition at Coalition For Marriage
I don't think we should institutionalise something which might frighten the horses.

Smart kids

 Go on, laugh. There's not much else to do on a wet March morning.
 
TEACHER: Why are you late?
STUDENT: Class started before I got here.

TEACHER: Alan, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
ALAN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
ALAN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.

TEACHER: Bobby, why do you always get so dirty?
BOBBY: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.

TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with ' I. '
MILLIE: I is..
TEACHER: No, Millie..... Always say, 'I am.'
MILLIE: All right... 'I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.'

TEACHER: Tony, your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your brother's.. Did you copy his?
TONY : No, sir. It's the same dog.