Day 255 - Failed Experiment

catch that pigeon

It was another of those longest days today...but not in a good way!

Work was really busy all day, culminating in an intensely frustrating and inconveniently over-run meeting with HR (how do these people sleep?!)...so I left work just before 5pm, later than intended, and had to (literally - and I mean that...well...literally!) run round Sainsbury's to grab a few supplies, before dashing home by around 5.40pm.

I'd promised to help Anna with some weird bat bothering escapade this evening, and as it was taking place in Melton Mowbray, we had to be away by 6pm. 

By 7.30pm we were on site and preparing to start the survey.

The plan was for each of us to take a pre-planned and very specific route around the perimeter of two adjoining fields.  We were to spend 5 minutes in one spot, listening for and recording bat sightings, before spending 5 minutes moving slowly on to the next spot (whilst listening for and recording bat sightings).   This process was repeated 12 times over 2 hours, as we covered both fields between us. 

In order to complete this seemingly simple task, I had to carry in one hand a clipboard with a map and spare paper for recording manually if needed.  In my other hand, I was to carry a bat detector (which transposes the sound of a bat's echolocation down to a frequency that human's can hear).

In my other, other hand, I carried a large box containing a sound recording system, to record any passing bat activity for later analysis.  In my final other hand, I held my smartphone and recorded details of any sightings onto a Google Form (one handed of course).

I had to do this whilst walking around an unfamiliar field, in the deepening dark of night.

So that was easy...not!

All was quiet for the first and last 50 minutes or so, but in the middle there was a flurry of bat activity....mostly pipistrelles foraging and commuting, although there were one or two other species which I'm not familiar enough with to be able to identify. 

I did catch a brief glimpse of a fox, sneaking through the field behind me, and at one point a deer was barking away just a few metres away from me on the other side of the hedgerow. 

The photo above was an experiment with Night mode, using a new camera app I've been playing with on my phone.  I'd disturbed a pigeon which was hiding in the long grass, and didn't seem able to fly away...this is an 8 second exposure of that pigeon!

So, erm yeah...Fail!!

Finally, to illustrate just how long a day it's been, check this out...

what's in the bag?!

I've been waiting for this big bag of SportPursuit delights to arrive for weeks...today, at last, it arrived...

But it's just a few minutes before midnight now, and I have yet to open it!

This will soon be rectified!

;-)

Day 177 - I Give You...Pigeons

part of a pigeon

Ironically, five minutes after taking a photo of a woodpigeon (whilst expressing my reluctance to use another photo of a woodpigeon), we came across this dismembered leg in the lane, and all of my good intentions went out of the window...

It's a bit of a grisly shot, I grant you, but it's not every day you see a pigeon leg that's been ripped off and discarded!

We often find clusters of pigeon feathers around here...as we did yesterday, strewn across our car park and lawn...coincidence?  

There weren't so many as to indicate a total kill and dismemberment, but certainly enough to suggest that something happened to a pigeon...and then we find a single pigeon leg 50m down the lane, the next day?

I think we can comfortably conclude that something did indeed happen to this woodpigeon - and that something is most likely to have been our local sparrowhawk, who we know frequents this area.

He's the most aggressive and successful raptor around here, and the primary predator of our local bird life.   Fast and agile, he can easily catch a slow, clumsy woodpigeon, if he catches him unawares.

Nature has conveniently provided a large local woodpigeon population, to support a solitary sparrowhawk.  The sparrowhawk takes weak and unhealthy pigeons, improving the general robustness of the local pigeon genepool in the process...and so both species thrive on the deal.

Nature always will bring systems back to balance...a point we should carefully consider, when assessing our interaction with the rest of the Earth's systems and lifeforms...we're not in a position to claim we haven't been warned!

But I digress...here's a solitary woodpigeon that was in the garden just before we found the foot.  The shot has a new melancholy now we realise she is probably missing her mate...

poor pigeon

In other news, when leaving work, through the dingy little corridor behind my desk, I spotted what appeared to be grass or hay up on the wiring looms high and left...

pigeons?!

Closer inspection revealed what appears to be the beginnings of a nest:

pigeon!!

Just at the top middle of this photo, there's a gap right through the wall, to the outside.  Anna is impressively knowledgeable on such things (as always), and thinks it's either pigeon, or starling.   

Now, pigeons are common around where I work, whilst starlings are depressingly scarce of late...so once again, it seems likeliest to be a pigeon...

What is it with all these pigeons today...even the dead and the absent found their way into my awareness...wtf?!

It feels unavoidable...one way or another, The Universe seems determined that I'm going to feature pigeons in my post today...

I'm a great believer in The Universe, so I can only respond...

as you command...I give you...

Pigeons!

:-)

Day 167 - Am I Boaring You?

rusty roofs

Anna came home today!  Yay!

As she was feeling tired and jet-lagged, after a bit of an epic journey, we decided to go for a slightly longer wander across the fields, to help her stay awake...blow away the cobwebs and all that...Jazz seemed relatively lively so we thought we'd see how far we could get. 

We followed a track across the wheat field, to these old outbuildings...I find them cool and interesting, and like to visit occasionally.  They're rarely used, other than to store an assortment of mysterious, odd-looking farm machinery.

Consequently, there's always signs of wildlife in there...owls, pheasants, rabbits and badgers use it as shelter, at least, and sure enough, when I approached there was a pheasant roosting in the dark interior.  Once he'd departed (with the usual crazy squawking), we ventured in to see what we could see. 

There were the usual signs, rabbit droppings, a variety of bird nesting material.   Then, hunkered down behind an old tyre, I found a somewhat bedraggled looking squab - a young pigeon.

damp squab

We left him alone and wandered back out into the daylight.  As I strolled around the back of the outbuildings, I noticed some unusual footprints.  

We'd been looking at prints in the mud as we'd crossed the fields...there were human welly prints, accompanied by a large dog...possibly Diesel the Doberman, who lives next door. 

But there was another footprint, cloven hooved, and large...we scratched our heads and thought maybe a large deer, though it seemed unlikely. 

Round the side of the outbuildings there were a number of these prints leading along the gap between the wheat and the hedgerow. 

cloven hooves

Here you can see two prints.   Note the indentation by the 3rd knuckle of my index finger, and large, splayed hoof. 

sasquatch?

Here's a slightly closer view, and again you can see the depression just above the tip of my thumb. 

There was an accompanying trail of slimy poo!

not deer

We'd briefly considered whether the hoofprint might belong to a Fallow Deer, although it would have to be a huge deer, with the size of the print - 3-4" long. 

That theory bit the dust as soon as we saw this poo - I don't know what this animal has been eating, but it's clearly not predominantly grasses!

Could it be a wild boar?!   

I saw one less than a hundred yards from this spot, 8 years ago.   There were a number of sightings in the area at the time, and local speculation was that they'd escaped from some (unspecified) boar farm. 

But since then there's not been a hint of them...but still, these prints...that poo...

We strolled home discussing whether we could find somewhere to put the trailcam, and determined to look up boar prints when we got home. 

Passing a completely different field, we saw a deer. A Roe Deer, I think - there has been a family group living in these fields for a couple of years. 

I took some photo's, but you can't even see there's anything there, let alone that it's a deer!

no deer

The deer is smack on the vertical mid-line of this shot, and around 55-60% up from the bottom...don't bother looking though, because you can't see a thing!

We bimbled on, and came under the watchful eyes of a small flock of newly shorn sheep.

feeling a little sheepish?

Amusingly, they seemed a tad more skittish than usual, as if embarrassed by their nakedness.

Anyway, once home, I googled wild boar hoofprints...this is definitely a wild boar!!!

How exciting!

We've lent the trailcam out at the moment, but I'll ask Anna to retrieve it...

It would be a real coup to get a photo of one for my blog!

B-)

Day 95 - Fat Birds Do Fly

spot the pigeon

Pigeons are really skittish creatures...which I suppose is why there's still so many of them about.  It's not a bad survival trait, skittishness.  Most prey animals have it to some degree.

Pigeons are quite clearly prey animals, and we humans have been a significant predator of them.   Of course we don't eat pigeon much any more, and it may be that raptors such as the sparrowhawk are their main predator now.

But we used to eat them, by the billion. 

The Passenger Pigeon was a North American pigeon species, around the same size and shape as a collared dove.   Two hundred years ago, it was possibly the most populous bird on the planet.   One flock observed in Ontario in the 1860's, was estimated to be 300 miles long and contain around 3.5 billion individuals. 

By the early 20th Century, they were extinct. 

Long story short, we (European emigrants to the New World) destroyed their habitat through mass deforestation, then harvested them into oblivion as a cheap food source.

The last one died in captivity in 1915. 

We should be ashamed of ourselves, if not for our lack of compassion, then for our utter stupidity and short sightedness. 

Yet all we hear from North America now is "Greatest Nation On Earth", and "Best Country That Ever Existed!", and other such jingoistic, demonstrably and obviously untrue propaganda...

Humans...sometimes I despair.

But I digress (that's so not like me)...so, back to the plot. 

What I find intriguing about the skittishness of pigeons (and birds in general), is that genetically, they've evolved from predators.

There are around 10,000 species of birds in existence now.  And they're all descended from a single species, Archaeopteryx. 

And Archaeopteryx is descended from one of the most well known of predators (thanks to Jurassic Park)...the Velociraptor.

Isn't that amazing - that all modern birds, almost universally twitchy and easily spooked, share the same genetic bloodline as such an infamous, carnivorous predator?!

Ok, so in fairness we must acknowledge that Spielberg exaggerated their size, look, and behaviour (artistic licence, don'tcha know?), but still, facts are facts, whether we want them to be or not. 

I don't know if the cheeky chap in my photo was aware of my hand and camera in the window - I was careful not to show myself at all, as they take off at the slightest human activity.   But I think I managed to avoid spooking him...although it turned out I couldn't get a brilliant shot of him either. 

But there he is, one of our feathered neighbours, a regular visitor, looking anxious and askance at the odd looking dark rectangle hovering in the window. 

He's a big, fat Woodpigeon, for those who are interested. 

Huey said that everybody knows fat birds don't fly, but it turns out he doesn't know what he's talking about...within about five seconds of taking this shot, and before I could get anything better, he did the usual distinctive, flappy, clattery pigeon take off, and there he was, gone. 

Later, little fat bird!

Day 83 - Day of Defeat

fail

Today's photo perfectly captured the way I was feeling.

The plan was to do this long multi-pitch climb on Pared Negra, the large, blank rock face above me in this photo.

We'd practised various bits of technical ropework, checked all our gear, and thought through everything we'd need to do.  

I'd taken a photo of the relevant page in the guidebook, as I didn't want to have to carry a heavy book up the climb with me...but I realised that in the bright sunlight, I wouldn't  be able to see the screen on my phone, so I'd even sat and hand-drawn the rock face and the route topography, and written the route description on a piece of paper.

However, I'd been up for a couple of hours during the night, feeling quite poorly, and I've been completely unable to shake this virus or whatever it is.   With hindsight, I can see that during this holiday, every time I've climbed, I've felt significantly worse the next day...and I'd just climbed two days on the trot...

Still, I got up just after 8 o'clock, determined to give it my best shot.

However, when we got there at around 10am, and I saw this huge face soaring hundreds of metres above us, and more specifically, realised how far up I'd have to scramble before even starting the climb, my heart sank.  I knew I had neither the energy, nor the mental acuity to take on such a serious challenge today.  Just hauling myself out of the car was an effort.

So I had to accept defeat and acknowledge that this particular mission will have to wait for another day.

To give an idea of scale, as we hung around enjoying the view, some other climbers arrived, made their way up there and started to climb.   We took some photo's and video's, but in none of them can you even make out a human.  They're so tiny in relation to the rock face that they're just a pixel or two high, and indistinguishable from the rock itself.

So rather than use one of those photo's, I used this one, as Anna has really captured my general lethargy, as well as my gloomy sense of failure...yay me...

On a brighter note (literally, although not metaphorically), a flock of coloured birds flew past a few times, and we watched them circle and chase, behaving quite strangely.   At one point they landed near to us, and I caught some video, from which this still is taken.

gang rape, pigeon style

A spot of googling reveals that they're racing pigeons.   The "sport" they're used for in this region of Spain revolves around a group of sex-starved cock pigeons chasing a hen pigeon.  The males are painted in bright colours so that the judges can assess which one makes the best job of what is, essentially, attempting to rape the poor hen!

I like the Spanish, generally, but I have serious issues with their use of animals for sport...

Day 78 - Trois Pignons

no boobs

Rest day today...so at least I've kept up one half of the rest/climb contradiction.

I felt so rough last night that I was in bed by 10pm, and slept for 11 or 12 hours.  

My morning then became a sad affair...

Photobox sent me a link to a book they'd put together of all my photo's of Bluez.  It didn't seem to occur to them that the reason I'd uploaded all my photo's of Bluez was so that I could make a book of his life, which I'd already done...

Still, I sat and looked through 60 pages of photo's of Bluez, and of course, Jazz, Anna, Luci (Bluez's friend the West Highland terrier), and myself (in less time-worn form).  Looking back over his life made me alternately smile and cry.   Good old Bluez...I so miss his friendly, open face and friendly, open energy. 

Having got over that, I then finished reading Mister God, This is Anna, and when the sad ending took me by surprise, I pretended that my cold, now in full flow, was the cause of my snuffling.   It was, to a degree, but it wasn't the only cause, I must confess.  It's a remarkable book, as I noted earlier.

This afternoon we went to the beach!  I've been coming to Spain since the early 60's ( yep, I am that old, as the title of this blog asserts).  I must have been here 20 or 30 times over the last 50 years, but this is the first time I didn't bringing a swimming cossie...today, I regretted it!

The picture above might give the impression that the beach was deserted - it wasn't.   We walked on another 10 yards from where I took this photo, to see a woman sunbathing topless...she must have been hidden by the bushes in this shot.

This led to an amusing conversation about why people who are so concerned about their appearance as to want to sunbathe topless, don't seem to have the slightest concern about the sorry, flabby state of the rest of their body.

Sunbathing topless does seem to be an issue of vanity, by which I don't mean to criticise - we are all concerned with our appearance in one way or another, and I'm sure most people enjoy the healthier (and thus more attractive) appearance of a tan.  It just seems to be at odds with an apparent utter disregard for a healthy appearance in other ways, particularly weight.

Excess weight may give the impression of wealth (albeit a misleading impression, in this modern world of cheap junk food), but it's also an indicator of a lack of regular servicing and maintenance.  And it's rarely attractive, although I grant this is a subjective opinion, and in no way a statement of fact.   

As we walked on, more sun bathers were revealed, and the main beach was fairly well populated.

We spent a lovely hour sitting on the rocks, getting splashed by the occasional wave, chatting about this and that, and watching sea birds flying back and forth.

When two pigeons flew by, Anna remarked how you never see three pigeons, a phenomena we've been observing since we went to La Foret des Trois Pignons last year.   Immediately, Trois Pignons appeared and flew in circles above us for a few minutes, as if to remind us that we don't know what we're talking about. 

(yes, I know Trois Pignons doesn't mean Three Pigeons, but it looks like it ought to!)

As the tide came in, we moved from rocks to beach, only to find it very hot, and we soon realised we'd probably been sitting in the sun for far too long for our pasty bodies.

Back at the car, we found it was 25C!

Lovely...

B-)   <= that's me in my new sungles I bought from Decathlon earlier!