We took a short break in East Anglia which allowed me to go to Norwich and but a super wide angle lens for a very reasonable price. I then spent the next couple of days coming to grips with the lens and realising that it is a great lens for certain circumstances. It certainly isn’t an everyday use lens, which I knew before buying it, but that was reinforced over the couple of days away.
So here we go again. Another Boris psycho drama. The latest episode is all about whether enough Tory MPs feel their chances of winning at the next election are better or worse with Boris as Prime Minister. Forget the rest of we poor saps or the dignity of the office of the Prime Minister this will have nothing to do with the vote tonight. It will be about survival of Tory MPs at the next election.
For what it is worth I think he will win and then proceed to drive the Tory party into the ground.
To misquote the Bard only a little:
Boris “is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing
This could also be the same for the confidence vote tonight.
Do bees have knees? I’m sure they must: they certainly have joints galore on their legs but are any classified as knees or is there some other name? I am not an apiculturist I couldn’t say. What I can say is that just at the moment the little creatures are working hard in my garden and thank goodness for that.
It is time that the latest brood of Blue Tit chicks that have been produced in this nest box to fledge. The parents have been patiently coaxing the chicks out of the only world they have ever known for the past day or so and finally they have started to take the hint and leave.
Unfortunately, they don’t really know how to fly at the moment so the first leap out of the box usually ends in the chicks crashing to the ground.
Eventually they recover and make it into the large number of trees, I know this as we planted them all, near to the nest box. Fortunately, we don’t have a great number of cats visiting the garden at the moment but even so it is unlikely many of the chicks that have fledged will make it to the end of the summer. Nature doesn’t care if the chicks are cute – only the lucky few survive.
Late spring i starting to merge into early summer. The garden is throwing off its spring splashes of garish bulb colours and slowly adopting its summer hues. Along with this the bees have returned in their frantic search for pollen.
Whilst this is going on the air is full of the frantic clicks and screeches of Starlings as the first fledglings are abandoned to the uncaring world of self reliance whilst their parents are once more going about the business of finding new nest sites for the second broad of the year.
And finally summer can’t be too far away as the swifts and swallows have returned. it’s not a bad time to be alive, at least here in my small corner of what will be forever England.
As I prepare this for publications my world is surrounded by birdsong. There are far worse background noises in the world at the moment.
I know all these empowering guru suggest that you should grab the day, get out an see the world or whatever passes for inspirational nonsense at the moment. Well I say nonsense. You can’t beat just sitting in your garden and watching the birds come and go and so that is what I have been doing for the past couple of days….oh and capturing a few images along the way.
One of the joys (?) of where I live is that at the moment the dawn chorus is really really loud and so if you happen to stir around about dawn from your slumbers the chances of going back to sleep are slim. So it was this morning. Nothing for it but to get up, get my morning walk in and enjoy the joys of spring.
I have been travelling through a bit of a photographic hiatus at the moment. This is isn’t the first and I doubt it will not be the last. Thankfully I can give myself the time just to let the creative juices to start to flow again (not the most becoming metaphor but you know what I mean). I’m not sure I’m fully out of my slump but this morning is a start.
I was going to write a post about the state of affairs within the current incarnation of the Conservative party and our ‘Dear Leader‘ Boris Johnson. What is the point? He’s broken his own rules, even his own MP’s seem to accept this and anyone with a decent bone in his body would have resigned in shame. Unfortunately, decent and shame are two words that Boris Johnson doesn’t understand so this whole nonsense will continue until he brings the Conservative party crashing down when he eventually falls – which he will.
Instead I thought this photograph was strangely apt.
(Perhaps this is all I need to say?)
It was wonderful to stand on the cliffs of Bempton and take in the fresh air. Of course this was a lot fresher than usual as the wind was blowing off of the land so taking away the normal aromas associated with Bempton at this time of year – which I actually missed. It also meant that the normal cacophony of bird calls was muted but beyond it was a grand day out.
There was a full blown ‘Twitch’ for a lone Albatross going on as well which meant that there was probably far more people on the cliffs than you would expect. I didn’t see the bird myself but was told many times by the RSPB guides the best place to catch it if I wanted, I didn’t so I avoided the crowds as best as I could.
It is almost 6 years since I last visited the site and a lot has changed in that time – one thing is the amount of gear I now carry around with me for a start – I made do with my 200-600mm lens, camera body and iPhone – this wasn’t the case in the past when I never left home without bags of kit. Another thing that has changed is that I am six years older and and very rusty when it comes to capturing fast moving birds. As a result I missed an awful lot of shots. It didn’t help that half way through I had a camera malfunction which, unbeknown to me, put the camera into APS c mode. I know, I know I should have kept and eye on such things but I didn’t. Fortunately, I was still able to capture most of what I wanted.
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