Paper Late - Genesis

"Paper late!" cried a voice in the crowd.
"Old man dies!" 

The note he left was signed 'Old Father Thames'
- it seems he's drowned;
Selling England by the Pound.

Yes, agreed, not the lyric of PaperLate (all one word) but those of Dancing With the Moonlite Knight, from the superb album that is Selling England by the Pound, which far more adequately describes our position. A combination of a severe bout of 'inspiration' yesterday afternoon, followed by a BBQ cooked dinner and a Claret or 3 at Harbins was just the starter for 10! Returning to Slight II at about 21:00 and logging strait into YouTube, the following 4½ hours were spent watching videos of Goth Band 'Fields of the Nephilim and even though the bottle has been found there is no sign of the Red contents.

If you haven't hooked up with this band yet,
take a peek
Fields of the Nephilim

which starts with a full rendition of their seminal

and in my opinion BEST album

ELIZIUM

This morning started at 05:00 with a series of pulses of heavy rain, which currently stands at continuous, heavy and windy, no further reason needed to award oneself a Guard and Steerage, back into the hammock

hence your 'Paper is Late'.

The inspiration of the afternoon  had come in a flash and
soon had me dusting of the cobwebs from the still
far from completed MEMOIR and typing away like billy'o!
Following on from a previous encounter, here is just a precis
of those efforts.

This was surely a good omen for the following day when taking a British Airways flight to Johannesburg to embark on the 2006, 3 weeks solo expedition, in hope of visiting 4 countries and covering several thousand kilometres in the process. This trip, unlike any of my previous, was giving me a certain amount of concern, not least because of the 5,000 murders in the capital that year alone but looking into such things too deeply could apply to just about every country on earth. Having said that, the intent was to get out of the city as fast as the arrival, but even then Lisa, my daughter, had asked me to contact her reference safe arrival and getting out of that area.

Even before leaving the confines of O. R. Tambo International an approach was made by a pirate taxi driver, and after a short chat decided to take the chance with him. This was a situation that would normally have been side-stepped but having already taken the precaution of jotting down both the name of the driver and car registration, then making a spoof phone call, within his earshot, transmitting these details to a nonexistent friend made the situation slightly more comfortable. The thrust for this first part of the trip was to visit the Rietvlei Urban Nature Reserve at Gauteng, which is one of the largest of its kind in the world, at 3800 hectares and supports in the region of 2000 head of a variety of game animals. Highveld bush and grassland for the most part it is situated close to the highway between here and Pretoria at a height of about 1700m above sea level. The deal with the taxi was for an all day fare, returning me to Joburg in the evening, and while provision had made to be sure of the directions to the site, Demetrius, the driver, had the local knowledge to get us there quicker and right on the stroke of 09:00. Already the small colony of Masked Weaver were hard at work nest building as we made our way into the reserve office to pay the entrance fee of 2.00 Rand. All of the animals here had been introduce to this area from the ‘wild’ so were considered proper additions to my personnel World List and it wasn’t long before the following (along with many more) joined those lists.

GREY-HEADED BUSH-SHRIKE

 OSTRICH

reacting as

 too close to the youngsters.

LEVAILLANT'S CISTICOLA

 HARTEBEEST

(KONGONI)

 YELLOW-BILLED DUCK

 IMPALA

BLACKSMITH PLOVER

 WHITE-FRONTED BEE-EATER

 AFRICAN LION

 AFRICAN LION

ROSY-FACED LOVEBIRD

 HELMETED GUINEAFOWL

ELAND

(the World's largest Antelope)

 BLESBOK
Call it what you will

PLUM-COLOURED STARLING

 AMETHYST STARLING

 or even
 VIOLET-BACKED STARLING
this beauty was undoubtedly, and head and shoulders, the star
among a magnificent array of birds on this trip, certainly more deserving
of a better image than my own uninspiring effort (top). We have therefore
'borrowed' the other shots, including the sharply contrasting and rather dowdy

Female,

from Wikipedia.

 

 BIRCHELL'S ZEBRA

 HADADA IBIS

 BLACK CRAKE

 ORANGE-BREASTED SUNBIRD

HARTLAUB'S GULL



AFRICAN ELEPHANT

WATER DIKKOP

CAPE FRANCOLIN

KURRICHAN THRUSH

SPECKLED PIGEON

BLUE-BILLED FIREFINCH

WHITE-FACED WHISTLING DUCK

BLUE CRANE
the National Bird of South Africa.
 
 BOKMAKIERIE

 and including the Plum-coloured Starling this was
THE
sighting of the trip.

WHITE RHINOCEROS
 Later, we pressed on through Mozambique, Swaziland and the
land-locked
Kingdom of Lesotho.

Rock Trivia = The Nephilim are the Goth equivalent of the Viking Valkyrie.

Elizium is their Valhalla similar to that of Norse Mythology 

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.
Hammer of the gods, will drive our ships to new land.
To fight the hordes, and sing and cry.
Valhalla I am coming.

Always sweep with, with threshing oar.
Our only goal will be the western shore.

Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin

WE HOPE THIS HAS CHEERED AN OTHERWISE WET, WINDY AND DANK DAY!

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Baby Come Back - The Equals

There wasn't a sign of a 'raindrop' on the Bournemouth International Airport weather website yesterday morning but even before the sun was up (06:33) a number of heavy pulses of the stuff had fallen on Parley Court Farm. They also had the wind wrong, but only the rate as it was blowing from the west, but almost double the 12 knots they had predicted.

HARBINS WILLOW TREE

This made for a slow start to the day, you cannot sensibly monitor
Moth Traps in such conditions, which despite a good deal of leg-work
brought scant reward. Good job then that since the beginning of this month
a number of more common birds, not recorded at all throughout August,
suddenly started making appearances right across our Recording Area
which we had committed to film!

BLUE TIT

SKYLARK

male and female

BULLFINCH

even a
REED WARBLER
put in a brief appearance at the Irrigation Pond while

CETTI'S WARBLER

are now singing on a daily basis all along out beat of the River Stour.

LONG-TAILED TIT
suddenly started appearing, seemingly in every bush and tree, but

COAL TIT

have remained far less numerous.

Again this year there has been great success with breeding

KINGFISHER
which kept extremely low profile during the summer but are now
bombing up and down the river and throughout Harbins Garden
with the highest count having been 7. We have now set the Trail Cameras
at favoured perches in the hope of even more snaps.

DUNNOCK

BLACKCAP
female and

male have also emerged from the shadows and it has seemed
somewhat strange not to have seen/heard either

GREAT TIT
or

GOLDCREST
for this long.

Finally, we turn our attention to the
Harbins Bird Table
where just yesterday c2

NUTHATCH,
a scarce bird here, were making an almighty din while filling their crops

 and a few days prior to that an equally rare visitor was a

JAY

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