Thursday 17 September 2015

Lucky Stars - Dean Friedman

"and you can thank your Lucky Stars 
that we're not as smart as we like to think we are"!
Had we been that smart, the Weatherman would have got the prediction right and there would have been no lull in yesterday's foul conditions between 05:00 and noon! As it was we were given ample time to check the Moth Traps, reported yesterday, and then get about doing some serious fieldwork. The first part of that has already been covered so now we can continue at 08:00 heading north to the Common and Merritown Heath. Among the Solar Panels were hundreds of 'mixed' Finches but out of all of them it was left to this single
GOLDFINCH
to linger long enough for us to get a snap.
MEADOW PIPIT
were also well represented, but we were hoping to improve on what was
achieved at the first attempt.
ROE DEER
broke cover briefly
and we did encounter more
MEADOW PIPIT
with only slight improvement on previous shots,
time to turn some corrugated metal sheets.
For our labours we managed to find and photograph
BLACK SLUG
VIOLET GROUND BEETLE
a small 
COMMON TOAD,
not much bigger than a 50 pence coin, along with a few

EARTH WORMs
(don't think Earth Worm has ever featured through these pages??)
Further along the run of panels
MISTLE THRUSH
had started to pose but not enough to keep us hanging about.
At Merritown Gate and still under the watchful eye of CCTV
We again encountered
WHINCHAT,
this time c2, but the images showed no improvements.
Now the 4 Belted Galloway Cattle have been confined,
by electric fence, to the small area known as The Island
there is nothing to Hoover up the 'fallers'
and there are still 10x as many yet to drop.
DO BADGERS LIKE APPLES??
Then came a little more excitement as
REPTILES
started playing a part
with first to show a couple of
SMOOTH SNAKE
(which were later added to by a further 3)
COMMON LIZARD
plus c2 Grass Snakes
and another
SMOOTH SNAKE
(that is considered to be c21 for the year thus far)
It was almost
SPINDLE-BERRIES
that brought the morning to and end, but no once again it was the
Heavy Downpour of Rain.
We are well aware that you would feel 'seen off' if you were not
bored shipless by even more
SMOOTH SNAKEs

If you have got this far and seen all the footage you can surely put the
NYTOL
to bed!
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