The Bagsy Blog: 10/03/20

Saturday 3 October 2020

Say What You Will

the Countryside is Still the Only Place Where I can Settle Down.

Out of Town - Max Bygraves

If you believe everything the Meteorological Office pumps out, and there is absolutely no reason not to, we are in for a full 2 weeks of wet weather. This shouldn't detere us from at least a short sortie on each day but, it seems the Wildlife have already got wind of it (excuse the pun) and surely not a lot of point in flashing the Moth Traps up. The good news is, we are still a couple of days in arrears, so there are 2 days covered, and we will make best efforts to come up with some sort of DAILY DRIVEL!

More out of frustration than sensibility we did chance our hand by flashing up the 2 Moth Traps closer to home on Wednesday evening, but…………

Within 10 minutes there was a ‘power cut’, due to damp in one of the control boxes, so we disconnected, restored the power and watched Salvage Hunters!

However, on the morrow the BBC forecast for Bournemouth International Airport showed that we were in for a stiff 4 hour gale commencing at 11:00?

The first vestages of daylight didn't look too promising either!

The time saved by not having to delve into otherwise empty, or uninteresting, Moth Trap was adequately taken up by the early on parade Royal Air Force but more particularly Boeing itself!

A BOEING CHINOOK HELICOPER

showed up firstly doing a single east to west pass and then reverse before disapearing, but what came next was far more determined to get 'everyone' out of there hammocks before 08:00!

The Colossal
BOEING C-17A GLOBEMASTER
Flying round in ever decreasing circles but failing to disappear!
Quiet a sight as none of these Aircraft 'stills' have been cropped.
To maintain some "peace on earth" we headed directly for the

IRRIGATION POND
where it was found that the once lonesome
MUTE SWAN
now has a companion while at the

GRAVEL PIT,
where we have been frustratingly reluctant to cut down this annoying stand of

GREATER REED MACE

in the name of a clearer view, where it was found there had been a further influx of c3

MUTEs

a Male

a Female and another

Male, which could make for a rather interesting ménage à trois!

Other interest came in the form of a newly arrived 'Female'

TUFTED DUCK

shunned in the first instance by the c3 now semi-resident,

GADWALL

partly obscured by the afore mentioned reed, but lightens the onus on the cameraman!

until the Ladies sorted things out which they often do.

While the poor young juvenile

LITTLE GREBE

gets nothing but grief when encountering the presumed parent birds!
Leaving the Pond for the Heath, on arrival at what is ostensibly the
Moth Monitoring Area
we first found a pair of

BLACKCAP ♀

BLACKCAP ♂

which could easily qualify as the harbingers

of the Winter residents, we don't usually go short of these Warblers across the colder months.
Otherwise, it was left to the more 'Common People' (Pulp) to provided the action both here and within the Solar Panel Compound with dozens of shots of which we hope not to over-burden you!.

As may be seen from this clip of

MEADOW PIPIT in GORSE BUSH

the wind had got nowhere near gale force but plenty more Pipits about, brace yourselves!
juvenile

STONECHATs

still in varying states of plumage before we clapped eyes on a stranger in the camp

with Tug already connected and what is considered to be the regular

HURCULES TRANSPORT

which put a whole different slant on Wing Walking!

We could not resist adding the Apple Tree once again, looking resplendent in the morning sunshine and before the rare breeds Cattle eat all the 'fallers'.

Another check on the wind speed before leaving the Heath but still getting nowhere near a 40-knoter
However, within the Solar Panel Compoud this

MEADOW PIPIT
appeared to be making 'heavy weather' of it, before a