UKC

A pre breakfast stroll: 14 cattle egrets, 2 great white egrets, plenty little egrets, grey herons and a probable bittern !  Male ring necked duck !!! Few rafts common scoter, displaying great crested grebes, gadwall and tufted. Phone scoped photo. Of, and Cetti’s warblers. 

And a mega rainbow to boot! Awesome

Nice, you up in Scotland for those?

After orienteering went to Burton Mere this afternoon with my new scope (did I mention what happened to the old one?); several Great White Egrets as well as Little but no Cattle. Several Marsh Harriers, heard a Cetti's and had a probable but not definite sighting of it. First Avocet had arrived back today.

Masses of Pink-footed Geese on the estuary - but the funniest thing was a small flight of PF (maybe 20) descending down onto a grass field full of Canada Geese until quite low. And then all of a sudden it was like they'd gone "shit, those are Canada Geese, pull up, pull up"; lots of strenuous flapping and they climbed up and away to somewhere else.

Best spot was a Chiffchaff which came as a bit of a surprise but apparently a few have wintered over here - another sign of climate change?

Just been out - similar to yesterday plus wigeon. Good but brief nieces Cetti’s. Got a week in Devon. The pond with cattle egrets had increased to 20+. And the probable bittern was a heron. 

Hope your new scope is good but didn’t know your other one ended its days. Chiffies have been seen regular this winter (not by me), defo a climate change. My brother, who knows a thing or two, reckons we could end up with over wintering ospreys at some point. They’d just need to adjust their diet for if everything is frozen or the fish are deep and hunt roosting duck. 

Male ringed neck duck. A real stonker. 

Male ringed neck duck. A real stonker. 

Male ringed neck duck. A real stonker. 

Male ringed neck duck. A real stonker. 

The old scope, therein lies a tale of numptiness.

Old scope was compact 50mm Hawke and I'd been intending to upgrade to its 60mm bigger brother (but still compact) with ED glass for some time but hadn't decided when.

You'll appreciate what happened very early on in this account but I'll relate it as it struck my awareness so that you can appreciate the full numptiness on display...

Out at one of my relatively local sites a couple of Fridays ago, it has very bumpy roads and as I was leaving I stopped where I could see a field with fieldfares and wanted to see if there were any redwings as well. Had a look with bins, needed better view, got the scope out and balanced it on the roof of the car to look through.

I can distinctly remember thinking "don't leave it on the roof of the car". Finished looking, got in the car and drove off. At some point shortly afterwards, presumably while still on the bumpy road there was some kind of brief clonking sound, and I remember thinking "the only loose thing in the boot is the case for the bins, maybe they didn't properly secure the spare wheel after the recent service/MOT".

25 minute drive home, as I come off the M60 slip road 5 minutes from home I decide to put everything in my rucksack (already on the passenger seat) and put that in the boot before getting a couple of things from Tesco.

At that point several pennies drop and an unexplained event becomes crystal clear. Aaaahhhhh, with copious swearing and self-loathing I drive all the way round the roundabout back onto the M60 and back to the scene of my stupidity.

I searched the area carefully but in the 45 minutes before my return, it has obviously been picked up by someone walking past. There is no obvious place (shop, pub, etc) to ask whether someone (if they were that way inclined) might have handed it in or mentioned it and the value is too low to be police worthy.

So apart from a post on the bird forum (just in case), I gave it up as lost 🤦🤦🤦

Value wise, I only really lost the second hand value because I was going to sell it when upgrading, so that's probably £100-120.

Thank goodness I did this before upgrading rather than afterwards, which would have been rather more difficult to get over.

The new scope is significantly brighter and sharper than the old one (would be poor if it wasn't). I don't think I'm likely to balance a scope on the car roof again, and I'm still frequently obsessively checking the location of my precious 😁