Barnes photos - installment 1

I borrowed Michael's camera for the trip yesterday. It's a Panasonic DCM FZ30, and I haven't really used it before, except for occasional snaps of garden birds. He gave me a quick lesson on how to do stuf like change the card and battery, change to manual focus, stuff like that.

I'm actually very pleased with some of the photos I got, considering the fact that I don't know much about it, and mostly just pointed the camera and pressed the button.

I'm going to subject you to loads of pictures because I can - some of them because I'm pleased with the shot, some because I like the birds and some because I like the mood.

I'll start with a few non-bird-ish ones, mostly views from hides. Impressive to see a place like that so close to a city - you can clearly see buildings in the background.

This one's actually a hide! It's octagonal, and looks out on all directions.

The dark guys are cormarants, and there are a few grey herons and (mostly black-headed) gulls.

I thought we'd stumbled into a B movie.

Would it be excessive....

... to post 47 pictures of the Barnes trip on here?

Perhaps in installments.

Anyway, I got up at the unpleasant hour of 5.30am. Washed, dressed, had breakfast. Went to railway station, grabbed my pre-booked tickets from the machine. Walked through the underpass to platform 2, and get the appropriate ticket ready. Realised that I had only 5 bits of card - one Chesterfield-London ticket, two seat reservations and two receipts. Panicked slightly as I could see my train and I'd already lost a ticket. Michael dashed back to the machine and retrieved it. Bless him. Train left promptly at 6.31.

Train journey was uneventful, I spent the time reading my bird ID book, and playing a couple of levels of Kirby on my DS. Got to St Pancras at 8.45 - it's a beautiful piece of architecture, even thought they are doing building work at the moment, making a restaurant or something I guess. Then I walked round to the other end of the building to get the Tube.

I haven't been on a tube train in years (that's probably because I haven't been to London in years), and I seem to have memories of it being complicated. But it isn't. I bought an all-day Travelcard for Zones 1-2 (£5.10) from the machine, followed the signs for the Hammersmith line, and waited 3 minutes for the train. I remember the tube being really crowded, people squashed on and most people standing up, but apparently that's not the case at 9am on a Saturday. There were loads of spare seats.

Got to Hammersmith at 9.20, then found the bus station. Then I caught the "Duck" bus to Barnes, and was pleased to find out that my Travelcard covered the fare, saving me £4 for the two journeys. 9.45 I was at the Wetland Centre, where Pete, Nic, Mark, Hugh, Elizabeth and Malcolm were waiting for me. I haven't met Mark or Hugh before.

The Wetland Centre is really nice, and it was a beautiful sunny day. Shame about the cup of mud, I mean coffee, that I suffered in the café. It took 8 little cartons of milk to make it drinkable.

Some great birds... I won't bore you all with the complete list but I counted 38 species (there may be a few more but I didn't see them so I didn't count them), with 8 year ticks for me and 5 life ticks - ring-necked parakeet, pintail, common gull (not that common before you ask), snipe, and bittern (very few of those around anymore and they are very hard to see). I wanted a water rail but didn't get one (I "dipped" in birderspeak). never mind, the bittern more than made up for it.

I was amused and enchanted by a small child as we were watching the ring-necked parakeets (which are bright green). The mother pointed and said "Look at the birds!" and the kid, obviously delighted by them, said "Froggies!". Bless.

It was also fun to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while.

The journey back was fine, except for the couple of lads on the train who'd obviously had a few drinks and kept talking very loudly, downloading songs on their phones then singing along, again loudly. I don't mind people having a laugh but I don't want to hear their inane conversations, such as the following...

Lad 1: Where's Derby? (one of the stations the train was calling at)
Lad 2: It's at Epsom.
L1: No, not the Derby, where's Derby?
L2: Epsom!

Maybe I'm biased, because Derby's in my home county of Derbyshire, but that narked me a bit, and even thought they eventually (correctly) came to the conclusion that it was "somewhere in the middle". Other snippets were, "Do bald people get nits (head lice)?" and "How far north are we now?" (My answer - we're 20 minutes out of London - so not very. Shut the fuck up already) And I appreciated their rendition of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" even less, especially as it's a song I can't stand in the first place. Once they started singing to Girls Aloud I had to resort to drowning them out with my mp3 player. I'd have preferred to drown them. At least they got off at Kettering, after thanking us all for being lovely companions. Like I said, they'd been on the pop (as we say round here).

Got back to Chesterfield at 18.40 and dashed home, washed and changed then went out for dinner with Michael's parent (Pat and Ron), his two brothers (Martin and Shaun) and their respective partners (Rita and Elaine). We went to a little Italian place which was lovely, great food and atmosphere. Very busy, but that's a good sign in a resturant, and they showed no signs of rushing us or wanting us to leave when we'd finished. Good company too, I haven't laughed so much in ages - the three of them, plus Ron, are so daft when they get together!

Came home, watched the lunar eclipse for a while, and looked through the pictures I'd taken during the day. Then went to bed, exhausted.

All in all, a really good day. :)

Wow

Just caught sight of something large and brown and flappy in one of the gardens that backs onto mine.

So I grabbed the bins, thinking it might just be a rook or similar with the sun shining on it - but it wasn't. It settled on the satellite dish on the back of their house and I got a good look at it. Sparrowhawk. Beautiful bird - it's always such a thrill to see a bird of prey, and again it's not exactly a common visitor. A year tick. I can't decide whether it was a male or female - it looked a bit big for a male, but it was a little orangy around the face so I'm leaning towards male.

Anyway, I grabbed Michael's camera, switched it on, set it to "sports" mode and tried to zoom in on the sprawk. Black screen. Why won't it work? Lens cap, dammit. I removed the lens cap and the sprawk flew off. Damn. I did get a great view of it flying over my garden though.

And typically, I've just had a similar problem with a couple of long-tailed tits on the fat feeder. I grab the camera, point and press the shutter. Blur. Again. Blur. LTTs leave. I realise that the camera's on manual focus.

Technology is conspiring against me... so I'll leave you with some pics that I've stolen. Imagine I took them, okay?














Long-tailed tit















Male sparrowhawk

Sniffle

I'm not well. Again.

I felt pretty out of it yesterday - all heavy and tired and headachy and the back of my nose/throat all clagged up, and somehow cold and shivery and uncomfortably hot at the same time. But I managed to get to rehearsal and had a pint afterwards with choir people.

Got home about 11.45pm feeling worse. My body felt like several people had been hitting me all over with big sticks, and I couldn't breathe through my nose. So I filled my hot water bottle and covered myself in ibuprofen gel (and promptly stuck to the bedsheets), but I just couldn't get comfortable.

Around 1am I turned over and suddently got cold. I shivered so hard I actually woke Michael up. He kindly got me another blanket - but I didn't get warm enough to fall asleep for another hour.

Then I started with the waking up (what felt like) every few minutes having to move because I was in pain. Also having frustration-type dreams (which involved something to do with trying to memorise a huge list of pictures, including on of a bar-tailed godwit - make of that what you will).

And a little later I realised that although I was still shivering, I was also way too hot. So I kicked off the extra blanket. And then slept a little better.

8am, Michael brought me some co-codamol, but refused my request for him to stay home from work and look after me. Bah. And I slept some more, and woke at 11am feeling a bit better.

Now I'm still very achy, don't feel like eating (that never happens to me), headache and swollen sinuses. But I'm much better. Fingers crossed that I'll be okay for Barnes tomorrow! I'm going even if I'm too exhausted to walk - I've paid for the train tickets and I want a ring-necked parakeet dammit (Pete promised me several). I'm actually quite looking forward to navigating the tube once I get to London - I've never been to London on my own.

I'm pretty cheerful today really, I've fed Mr Robin his mealworms and I saw one of the wrens and I heard a great tit singing nearby, which was a treat as I've only ever seen one once in the garden. No idea why, they are so common but don't grace me with their presence. Loads of blue tits, starlings, house sparrows, blackbirds, of course Mr Robin (he has such a beautiful voice) and some jackdaws and rooks and a collared dove out there today. And a lovely sunny warm spring day.

And my new oven arrived!!! All I need now is a new kitchen to put it in...

Books!

Stolen from Pete, although I've seen it a few times now.

*Look at the list of books below.
*Bold the ones you’ve read.
*Italicize the ones you want to read.
*leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.
*If you are reading this, tag your it. if you so want.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

So, 28. And loads I mean to read someday. I'm just to cheap to buy many books and too lazy to go to the library. ;)