Farnboro John
Well-known member
On Saturday after much dithering I went with my brother David and our friend Mike to Kemble Classic Jets airshow, in the Cherokee from Farnborough. Flying to shows beats the daylights out of sitting in traffic queues, plus the spotters photograph your arrival as if you are part of the entertainment! It sneaks on here because as we lined up to take off on the return flight, a Brown Hare was sitting calmly at the edge of the mown grass by the runway. I noticed it just too late to get the camera on it before we set off into the wild blue yonder.
Halfway through the afternoon pager news that the Royal Tern had reappeared, at Llandudno, brought an expletive from me and set Sunday's agenda.
I picked Roy up from Tring and we launched off up the motorway network, arriving on site at about half past eight. The bird wasn't of course showing but after we had scanned the west shore as well as the bay where it had been seen the previous day, I started to find a few mammals, beginning with a pod of Bottlenose Dolphins travelling East across our bay and around the Great Orme. There were twenty or more - as usual it was hard to get an accurate count - including some big deep-bodied adults and at least a couple of quite small juveniles, all dark ocean grey on back and flanks with an almost pinkish pale grey underside occasionally showing in half-breaches.
Soon after that I noticed a couple of Feral Goats up on the headland and that led others onto a Red Fox playing with a single large cub on a rocky shelf nearer us. It suckled briefly proviing it was the vixen. They were on view for about half an hour, mobbed desultorily by Jackdaws to which they paid no attention: they finally retreated to their den just our of our line of sight as the not very good weather deteriorated to fairly horrible. The goats also wandered off out of sight leaving us huddling under beach shelters scanning empty seas.
Claims of the tern in the afternoon had us racing back to the North bay, but no prolonged views were had by anyone and not much detail seen on the bird that had passed quickly through. By early evening the weather was sunny though not exactly warm, the remaining twitchers enjoyed brief views of an emu in the nearby petting zoo and a small group of about six Harbour Porpoises added my second mammal year-tick of the day to put me on 41 for the year.
We knocked off at 1900 and a reasonable run back got me home, after dropping Roy, just before midnight.
Round 2 to the Royal Tern.
John
Halfway through the afternoon pager news that the Royal Tern had reappeared, at Llandudno, brought an expletive from me and set Sunday's agenda.
I picked Roy up from Tring and we launched off up the motorway network, arriving on site at about half past eight. The bird wasn't of course showing but after we had scanned the west shore as well as the bay where it had been seen the previous day, I started to find a few mammals, beginning with a pod of Bottlenose Dolphins travelling East across our bay and around the Great Orme. There were twenty or more - as usual it was hard to get an accurate count - including some big deep-bodied adults and at least a couple of quite small juveniles, all dark ocean grey on back and flanks with an almost pinkish pale grey underside occasionally showing in half-breaches.
Soon after that I noticed a couple of Feral Goats up on the headland and that led others onto a Red Fox playing with a single large cub on a rocky shelf nearer us. It suckled briefly proviing it was the vixen. They were on view for about half an hour, mobbed desultorily by Jackdaws to which they paid no attention: they finally retreated to their den just our of our line of sight as the not very good weather deteriorated to fairly horrible. The goats also wandered off out of sight leaving us huddling under beach shelters scanning empty seas.
Claims of the tern in the afternoon had us racing back to the North bay, but no prolonged views were had by anyone and not much detail seen on the bird that had passed quickly through. By early evening the weather was sunny though not exactly warm, the remaining twitchers enjoyed brief views of an emu in the nearby petting zoo and a small group of about six Harbour Porpoises added my second mammal year-tick of the day to put me on 41 for the year.
We knocked off at 1900 and a reasonable run back got me home, after dropping Roy, just before midnight.
Round 2 to the Royal Tern.
John
