I'd wondered what that on earth that packet of 7s I found in our lab was for...maybe still not big enough for Norman!

I've had both incorrect and correct Tree Pipit calls recorded in our garden reported to a similar level of confidence (nice to get a genuine overflying migrant record in August). Our resident Robin indeed often becomes a Hawfinch, or Black Redstart.

I've been using a Songmeter Micro and running the recordings through BirdNet via Chirpity. Last week it was 70% sure that a building alarm going off for 4 hours was all Whimbrel...

One of my favourite bird songs! Woodlark gave a wonderful close flypast in full song then continued to sing from a perch for a while.

Sedges have edges / rushes are round / grasses have nodes right down to the ground

Beautiful map and much-loved old birding haunts. And speaking of ancestors the only one I know of with any money owned a shipyard in Lymington at the time this map was drawn. Now Berthon www.berthon.co.uk/about-bertho.... His sons were variously alcoholic or insane and certainly no money remains 😆

I'm sure we're not the first or last to do so, but some friends and I set this poem to music - must finish the recording sometime!

Welcome! ☔

So glad it finally made it out of the planning maze! We went on one of the tours back in August, exciting to see the potential.

Yes, I always enjoyed this as a book title!

Absolutely!

I enjoy what family history I know precisely because of the lack of fame and interesting selection of 'real' jobs that crop up! Bargemen, iron puddlers, cobblers, brickies, etc. I suppose I admit to feeling a sense of inherited nobility from those true nobles which I'm probably squandering ;-)

Saw a couple this summer but that was in the Cairngorms, so I was cheating!

Redpoll numbers are pretty shocking, was not on my radar. But anecdotally it occurs to me I very seldom see them now.

And rather than fight back Labour keep reverting to 'his ideas don't add up', essentially ceding the argument as though if a plausible way to do this were open to the Labour government they'd go right ahead. Not to much appeasing Farage as inviting him to take over.

But we did get there in the end and Lubeck is very lovely (with an unexpectedly diverting local natural history museum)