Slavonian Grebe. Priory CP.

The End of the World is Nigh

Apparently a significant number of people on this planet believe that the world will end on 21st December 2012. This is variously known as the Mayan Prophecy, Hopi Prophecy, Doomsday Prophecy, etc. If you are one of those people, please pay close attention to the following very important announcement. And if you're not worried about it, well you should be, because it's obviously true.

God has spoken to me and told me that anyone who gives away all of their money before 21st December 2012 will be saved and go straight to heaven when the Earth is destroyed. To make it as easy as possible for you, I've added a donation button below. He also said that you don't have to wait until the day before to give your money away - entry to heaven will be on a 'first come, first served' basis, so the sooner you do it, the quicker you will get in (a bit like checking in your baggage online).

So just click the button and give me all your money (it's probably OK to keep enough to pay the next month's bills, as long as it really is all gone by the 20th). You will then have the double satisfaction of knowing that when the last trump sounds in just over a month, you and your family will be transported instantly to Paradise, whilst I and all the other miserable sinners and heathens go straight to hell where we belong.

More Waxwings

More of the five Waxwings along Sunderland Road, Sandy, 17th November 2012 by Martin Palmer

Waxwing

One of the five Waxwings along Sunderland Road, Sandy, 17th November 2012 by Jim Lawrence

A-hole Alert!

No idea what this is all about - some dodgy looking bloke I met in a car park asked me if I could advertise his new service. Click for larger image:

Short-eared Owl

This Short-eared Owl was found in a stairwell of a block of flats in Luton.  It was taken to the Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue and later released on Totternhoe Knolls. 15th November 2012

A Hawfinch in the rain

I debated for at least an hour this morning whether to go out in the pissing rain and in all probability see nothing, but in the end I decided I needed the exercise, and headed for Cossington Meadows.

At about 11:50 I was walking along the river bank near Plover Meadow pool, checking through a mixed tit flock and doing my best to pretend I was birding somewhere more exciting (the sort of place where something like a Pallas’s Warbler might be in with the flock), when an unfamiliar high-pitched ‘zeerp’ call somehow penetrated my hood/woolly hat combo. I looked up and was delighted to see the unmistakable chunky shape of a Hawfinch bounding towards me across the river! For a moment I thought it was going to land in the hawthorns, but I was obviously too close, and it continued across the pool and away towards the main track and Rectory Marsh.

A welcome county found tick, and the first one I’ve seen in Leics for over 14 years, the last being at Clipsham Hall, where they were fairly regular in the late 90s. And also, it has to be said (sorry Dave and John!), a mega Soar Valley tick, possibly even the first record for the area? If it has ever occurred, it must have been way back in the 1940s or 50s, when they bred at Quorn, which isn’t too far away. Not that my Soar Valley list is anything to shout about though...