Summer seabirds, revisited...

Here are a few digiscoped photographs of Bempton seabirds, which I posted on the Bird Watching Magazine Blog from the summer. They didn't make it to this blog at the time, so, as a compulsive poster, I thought I'd add them now...

Flapping Razorbill

Guillemot laughing in your face

Imbricated Gannets

Still more from Peru

"Will these Peruvian holiday snaps never cease?"


Peruvian Pelicans over the Pacific (DSLR)

Grey-headed Gull (DSLR)

Chinese Water Deer

Woodwalton Fen, 20.10.07 (digiscope)

Ice, ice, ba...

...No. You can't make me say it, even though my head is singing it. Unspeakable, blasphemous, undescribable horror too vile for mortal man to comprehend and survive to relate the heinous truth.

To be Frank

It's a quacker!

Desperate for it

If you fall off your bike and crash, chest first, to the ground, and no one is there to see you, do you still make a sound?

The answer to this particular koan, my friends, (he says, ruining your path to enlightenment), is yes, if you happen to have just dialled on your mobile and someone just answered it.

So, I landed in a winded breathless, groaning agony of a heap, and realised that one of the chief reasons I just fell off my bike was that I was calling Will Bowell. I put my phone to my ear and heard Will telling me to stop making such revolting noises.

Another reason I fell off is that I was hurtling along like Billy Ocean, trying to get to Peterborough's Town Bridge as quickly as possible, as I was dying for the Shag Will had found there (keen to keep the old PBC year list ticking over, don't you know, what?).

When I got there, Brian Stone and Will were watching it resting on the 'bank', as happy as Fat Larry's Band. Brian and Will got the shots and you can see them at The Natural Stone and Will's Adlib Blog. Here are my paltry efforts in the dying light (DSLR)



The Shag then swam east (downstream), fishing as went - even around a drowning swan, but that is another story - then headed under the Fitzwilliam Bridge and was lost from view.

My ribs hurt.

Ice light birds

Grey Heron

Teals on ice


What a beautiful bird the humble Moorhen is.

Black-headed Gull

The many colours of a lake reflected in a Coot.

I took advantage of some lovely frosty sunshine this morning and cycled in to work via Ferry Meadows with my DSLR strapped to my back. Here are some of the shots I took. Enjoy (and click them as usual for larger versions).
All photos were taken with a Canon Eos 30D with a 300f4 IS USM and 1.4x converter.

Lobby Mummy

This mummified corpse (from Carajia, I believe) bizarrely resides not in a museum, but in a hotel lobby in northern Peru...

Weedon's World May 2007

I'm going to start bunging my monthly columns in Bird Watching magazine onto this site as JPEGs. Click on them and they should be readable...

Here is May 2007 for unseasonal starters. Enjoy.

In case you don't know, Bird Watching magazine is easily Britain's highest-selling monthly bird magazine. It is available from WHSmith etc and of course you can subcribe by clicking here.

Whooper

Whooper Swan, Welland, Deeping High Bank, 10.11.07 (DSLR)

Fairfield in the gloom

Fieldfare, Tanholt pits, 10.11.07 (digiscope)

Themes

Say hello, wave goodbye.
Crack your face;
ignorance is hatred;
brothers in birds;
improve your stress.

Finding my licence.
House upside down.
Dawn of digiscoping.
Reed Bunting. Spurge.
Two singing Quail.
Zen letting go.
There in the book.

Natural cycle of happiness.
New regime.
Too late but never too late.
Woodpeckers raptors.
Waiting for the elite.

White rumps.
Honorary Fieldfares.
Bullfinches, House Martins.
Ambiguity of Goldfinches.
Where do Bramblings lie?
Outertail feathers don’t cut the mustard.
Curlew Sands beat Dunlin.

Restoration

I'm finally getting round to the laborious process of restoring all my old posts. I used to store photos on my own webspace, but when that site folded, they vanished. I've so far put pics back in the archive as far as July 2005. I've roughly another year to go if I can find the shots...

It's nice to see some old friends as they reappear.

Please go back and enjoy the archive as it is gets restored.

Weedons

Compared to the profusion of images in this digital age, there are very few surviving snaps of the young Michael James Weedon. Here is one I have unearthed which is showing signs of fading with age. I am the one in the centre, demonstrating a certain extrovert side to my personality; with my siblings looking a tad bemused (or is that embarrassed).
Note my wet-look, leatheralike, plastic jerkin, flowery shirt-and- tie with meta-ring woggle and flowing mass of ginger locks.
Note also the cool, age-defining, sew-on Apollo 11 badge on Graham's coat.
Left to right: Graham, Michael, Alison, Christopher.

As always, click the photo to enlarge it.

Battle of wits

Black-tailed Godwits were particularly aggressive in a corner of the brackish marsh at RSPB Titchwell Marsh today (2.11.07). There were bouts of weird chattering calling followed by full-on physical attacks. Here is some action from one of these vicious battles (DSLR). This fight ended with the bird on the left backing off very very slowly, facing its opponent.

Shore buntings

Sanderlings among the wormcasts, Titchwell beach, 2.11.07 (digiscope)

Spot Red

I really must go back to Titchwell when its sunny and get some decent shots of birds like this Spotted Redshank (digiscope).