Tuesday, October 19, 2021
The forecast was correct. Two days of rain, Saturday and now Sunday, with the weather extracting revenge for last week’s fine days.
But this morning, bursting with optimism despite the cloud filled sky I had set off for Pilling and on the way clocked 2 Barn Owls again, one at Burned House Lane and a second one flying across the road at Lambs Lane. After yesterday’s rain the fields alongside Biker Mile were crowded with Curlew and Lapwing, several hundred of each as I stopped at Gulf Lane in the hope of seeing a third Barn Owl; I didn’t, so turned the car around and headed back to Lane Ends where in the morning quiet I picked out singing Chiffchaff and Reed Warbler then watched a nearby Willow Warbler moving through the greenery.
The plan was a walk to Fluke and then back to the car park, but looking west and south all was grey. Within ten minutes the rains arrived again so I abandoned play for the time being.
Over lunch I switched on our Sky-free TV for yet more news and views on the shameful, murky world of Murdoch with its shady, back-slapping politicians, policemen, journalists and hangers-on who live therein. In disgust I zapped the remote control to “standby” and hoped the sun might shine a light into dark corners of UK life or that I might get a few hours for afternoon birding or ringing a few Swallows.
It wasn’t to be, and at 2.30pm rain still piled in from the west. It became time to sort the hundreds of photographs that clutter up the PC, abandoned for months on end as new, superior, more current ones arrive from another birding day for urgent cropping and Photoshopping for the blog.
I found a few old but respectable pictures to make the page up for today; Greater Sand Plover, Bluethroat and Cattle Egret from sunnier days in Egypt. It’s strange to look back and think that when we were there in January and February of 2011 it was ordinary Egyptians who took to the streets to sort out the corruption in the Egyptian establishment.
No sign of the Sunday Sun then? Thank goodness.