Day of partial rest

Strong westerly wind and heavy showers this morning. Walked up to the Toab shop to get milk so I could have some tea and porridge. After breakfast walked round Toab and saw nothing. Spent the rest of the morning sitting on the sofa with a farting cat, drinking tea, eating fried eggs and messing about on the laptop while listening to John Shuttleworth on BBC7.

Bird news: The Wryneck and Meadow Pipit that were in Rob's freezer last year are still present, and have been joined by this Crossbill (gratuitous knob gag coming up) – a nice red cock:

This afternoon Mark and I got Rob to drop us off at Grutness, and we had a kick around there for a couple of hours but saw nothing of any note. Arriving back at the house, Gary told us he had had a Little Bunting at Channerwick so we went there and saw it almost as soon as we got out of the car. Mark & Gary got some good photos of it, but I completely fucked it up as my camera was still set to +2 exposure compensation after photographing some Greylags flying over earlier. By the time I'd sorted the camera settings out the bunting had flown off.

I then went round the back of where it had come down, only to fall over a fence and land on my arse. Just as I finally made it to where Mark was now getting more photos it flew off high down the valley and we didn't see it again. The old cliche that owning a camera doesn't make you a photographer certainly applies to me. In my case owning a camera usually turns me into a fumbling incompetent fuckwit whenever there's something worth photographing right in front of me.