It's All Been Rigged

 Harking back to Friday and the apology of the following day, it was a most welcome visitation by

DAVE PENNEY
a long-time shipmate from those heady years onboard the Buchan Alpha Floating Oil Production Platform in the North Sea. Having, as usual, taken breakfast at 05:00 to maximise time on the upperdeck seaching for Wildlife, when relieved Dave was encountered at the bottom of the stair-well to the heli-deck and asked just what I did ever morning 'up-top'. My reply was to grab the rig binoculars and follow me to the upper-deck where he was directed to the starboard flare-boom and ask if he could see anything unusual among the Gulls. He quickly picked out the immature

GLAUCOUS GULL

followed by 'catching' a

YELLOW-BROWED WARBLER
among other things, which was him well and truely hooked!
After a previous visit some years ago he also graduated towards Moths and so we headed for the traps. En-route a

GREAT TIT
was seen, absent over most of the Summer thus far, and while nothing new was caught there were a good number of Insects not familiar to him as trapping in a quite different environment, such as.

SMALL RIVULET

the ever welcome beauty that is

LARGE EMERALD

with

BLACKCAPs
continuously singing

COXCOMB PROMINENT

and the GIANT among its peers

PINE HAWK-MOTH
Other expectations were not high given the season but got lucky with

almost equally vocal

NUTHATCH
With all Reptiles being extremely scarce this year it was considered a

real bonus to find

c2

SMOOTH SNAKES
under one cover

and a

CLICK BEETLE
under another.

A Mellow Yellow

WILLOW WARBLER
was also a welcome addition with things going

'slightly off the scale'

when one of the juveniles also obliged.
Hopes were high in finding the Star of the Show as the

LITTLE GREBE HUMBUG

was found away from the nest in open water but still under the

watchful eye of the parent bird

with the

Cherry on the Cake
being provided by the considered 'returning'

GADWALL

Foot Note:-

Dave more or less took over from me after retirement sending records to the North Sea Bird Club, which is considered the same as any County in the UK, with a dedicated recorder and all. His observations were truely rewarded when finding, observing and photographing the first and still only

LAUGHING GULL

(from the America's)

for that Sea-way but not these individuals, from the archive, we hasten to add.