birds, snow and nice bosses (creep creep)

OK, quick catch up blog here.

Last Friday – Went to Doncaster to do a bit of train spotting. Nice day out, used a free weekend ticket that I get with South West Trains to go up to London. Across on the underground to Kings Cross and then to sample National Expresses service to Doncaster. They have just celebrated their first 'birthday' i.e. they have operated the route for a year. They had some single tickets on offer for just a fiver and I took advantage of this to have a day in Doncaster for just £10 return plus underground fares. Now for the underground I acted like a proper Londoner and used an oyster card. Normally when I go to London I get a travel card but it wasn’t worth it for just two trips across town. So I got an Oyster card. It's cheaper than paying by cash.

Doncaster was good but very cold. Added a couple of churches to my list. St Peterswhich was close to the station and Doncaster Minster which is also just a short walk away. There are a coupled of more churches a bit further away that you can see. I might do these on my next visit to here in a couple of weeks.

Saturday and Sunday – Did a bit in the garden. As much as the cold would let me. Clearing of the border is going well. I also moved the rose buses from the front of garden to the back and made a little display of them.

Monday – Tried to get to work in the snow, but failed. Walked down town and waited for an hour at the train station for a train. When the station announcer said that they were operating a very limited service and that we should listen to local radio for updates I thought that was it. If he doesn’t know when the trains are what hope do they rest of us. I walked home. Visiting Tesco on the way. Buying amongst other things doughnuts. They thought of spending a quiet day at home eating doughnuts seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Just settling down when the door went. Sue couldn’t get to work either. Oh well I guess it would be bad if I ate all the doughnuts anyway. Not that I would have done. Would have saved a couple for Sue. It was nice to have her safe at home rather than trying to drive through all the snow. Doughnuts are for sharing anyway, but was hugely disappointed in the amount of jam in them… You hardly noticed in some of them that they were supposed to be jam doughnuts. Shame on you Tesco.

Monday evening received an e-mail from my boss, telling me not to struggle trying to get into work on Tuesday. Sue had mixed emotions. Pleased that I didn’t have to try to get to work and get into trouble. Not quite sure that I should be given carte-blanch to have a another day at home but realising that Charlie is such a lovely boss to think of me like this… He is a good boss… One could not wish for a better boss…. Top leadership, Wish all the bosses there could be more like him. Yeap – he reads my blog and that I have my 6 month review tomorrow!

Whilst spending time working from home I sat in the conservatory looking out at the bird life, whilst still working hard. Put out plenty of food for them and this seemed to encourage the birds in. Them being unable to get any due to the snow. We had two wagtails in the garden, a species I have seen before in the garden but only on a rare occasion. Two new birds seen in the garden were a Chiff-chaff (a life tick for me) and a Green Woodpecker (a year tick for me) But most importantly they added to the garden birds list as well. It’s great to have birds in the garden. Sit and watch them for hours and I don’t have to travel to see them.

Wednesday was off on compassionate leave to attend the funeral of Sue’s Aunt Marion,. A lovely lady Sue is blogging about that right now on our laptop.

Thursday – back to work – boo hiss..’

Good Weekend

Gosh, its been such a long time since I last blogged. Sorry about that folks.

Having a good weekend, yesterday was spend mostly in the garden. Got my plan sorted out for the veg plots for the summer. I'll have to blog about that later. Anyway yesterday was spend most clearing areas of the garden. Gave the fir tree a bit of a chop to let more light into the bed below it and visited homebase for spinach seed and another pair of secetours. I've no idea where my original pair have got to.

Today been up to Blashford Lakes to do some bird watching. Highlight must have been the Iceland Gull. First one ever for Blashford apparently. Also saw the Black Necked Grebes together with my favourite grebe, the Little Grebe.

great day

Good day today seeing Lady S-I-L, Anne (she writes books you know – and good ones) and my brother Keith. Had a really good day. Good birding and good company. Went down to Titchfield Haven. Saw my 100th different species of bird in Hampshire today. A marsh Harrier. Saw lots of nice birds and really used my scope, which I love. Taken spotting to the next level.

Birthday

Yeap its my birthday today. Had lots of books, a brid watching in Norfolk DVD. A hedge trimmer from Sue's parents but my main present was a brid watchers scope. Tried it out this afternoon. Its great. Spotted a scaup today. First time ever. Wouldn't have seen it if it wasn't for my new scope. Doesn't count to my Hampshire list though as we were at Langford Lakes in Wiltshire. Good venue. Good day today.

Lovely Tits

Was sat in the conservatry today having been off work sick, yes I'm feeling a lot better but think Sue might be going down with it. Anyway, Robin normally has the garden largely to himself, plus the odd Collard Dove, pidgeon and blackbird. However today we had a flock of various tits decend on the garden. Robin was going mad trying to chase them off his patch. He even had a go at the collard doves who were taken by surpise.

The tits contained at least 3 long tailed tits, 2 coal tit and some great and blue tits. This was the first time long tailed and coal tits have been seen in our garden. Lovely.

Going to do somecatch up blogs at somepoint, as I haven't bloged for ages. I haven't told you all about my holiday in Austria. It was great. Apologies to all for not getting a postcard. I did buy them and buy stamps but didn't get around to writing them out etc.

Busy Weekend

On Saturday went to Aldershot for a AFC Bournemouth match. We got a draw. It was a relief to come back from 1-0 down, but we should have made the chances when we had them in the first half. Used one of my free train tickets I get with my annual season tickets. Made the most of it by travelling on some lines that I’ve never travelled on before, namely Aldershot-Guildford and the two lines from Guildford up to London via Effingham Junction. Didn’t think much of Aldershot as a town. Neither did my friend Gill who was hoping to get some shopping in.

Today Sue and I decided to have a day together and went down to Titchfield Haven. Added a couple of birds to my 2008 Hampshire List, namely Sandwich Tern and an Osprey. Both of which went into my Life List as well. Unusual sighting of the day must go to one of the Kestrels who was attacking a couple of magpies. No idea why it was doing that.

Do you know what it is?

This picture has been bugging me for a couple of weeks. Seen in my garden on one of our new fence post. Let me get very close to it to take the picture. Who'll like to guess what it is. I must admit I needed the help of another birder to tell me what it is.

Garden bird of the year

In my last blog I mentioned about seeing what I thought would be Bird of the year. Well today I saw what must be what be Garden Bird of the Year. Sue say it first and announced that we had a Heron in te garden. I thought she was playing a game, like on QI when they say that there is an elephant in the room. To be honest I did see one flying over a couple of weeks ago. As it didn't stop I couldn't count it in our garden list, but it did today. Nice one.

Great Day

Went out this morning to the Swanwick Nature Reserve and we did the Flight Reservations geocache. Good cache, very easy find. Dropped off a number of travel bugs, one of which we’ve had since October. Shame on us. It was really good to get a cache under our belt again. It’s been ages since Sue and I have done a cache together.

Nice nature reserve. Must go back there when its less muddy.

Off to the gardens centre. Sue and I both said that we were going to have a tea/coffee there and MAYBE a healthy snack. We both arrived at the café in the gardens centre and just knew that we were going to have lunch there. It’s great when your relationship gets to a level where you know what the other is thinking and wanting.

The real reason to visit the garden centre was to buy seed potatoes, broad beans seeds and I thought that I might buy some onion sets. I’ve got seed but thought it might be easier and quicker to grow them from sets. Anyway a bag of them was only £1.49. In my great garden plan for 2007 I had planned to buy some first early potatoes as they take the shortest time to grow and thus when they are harvested I might get a chance to grow something else in that plot before the summer is out. However, we mostly eat potatoes in their baked variety and that means having main crop ones. So my great garden plan 2007 has already been altered, just one week after devising it. I will have to publish the plan on this blog soon, so you can all see what a great plan it is.

Back home. There is a website called www.openatc.com which displays aircraft flights in almost real time. I’ve enjoyed looking at it before but tonight was the first time that I have sat in the garden and tried to tie up the aircraft on the computer screen to those flying overhead. OK the computer was some 6 mins behind but once I got the hang of it, I was amazed on how good it was. Saw lots of nice aircraft which I will be putting on my aircraft spotting blog. I hope to spend more time on that programme tomorrow.

Was getting a bit cold outside, so I packed up and realized that I had just enough time to do tea and sit down to watch Harry Hill’s TV burb, one of my favourite programmes on TV at the moment. Then I nice evening watching the comedy film Over the Hedge, which I thoroughly recommend.

My friend Stu up in Loughborough has just had his, erm, manhood pierced and a ring put in it. On his blog he’d put on a picture of it but you had to click on a link to see it. I haven’t wanted to see it and so I have never clicked on the link. Why would I want to see another mans bits?? Sue got curious tonight and clicked on the link to see the picture. I was outraged. So used my work laptop to do it!! Lets hope they never so a search of PC’s at work an find that one. It would take a lot of explaining.

Good things today
1) caching with Sue again
2) Nice Nature Park
3) www.openatc.com

Bad things
1) Sue using my work laptop to look at porn.

No Respect

Had quite a good night last night getting my pictures sorted out a bit more. Adding them to my pbase.com account. Also I got my band website up and running. OK So it was my mate Dave who has done all the work and all I’ve done is copy the files onto the webserver. I asked him today whether he thought that we should do a band blog but he never dignified my question with a reply. So I take that as a no.

Also started a new 'blog' to record my aircraft sightings and photos. Exciting stuff eh!

Earnt loads of Fiancée points today. Went to pick up the Ricky Gervais tickets today. Also went into WH Smiths today and noticed that The Times had already started their book of the week promotion. So bought the book for Sue. Two lots of points to me today.

Sent in an update for the guy running the Hampshire Bird Watchers List this evening. It's just a list of how many different species have been seen in Hampshire by various bird watchers. So far I've seen 18. So I’m currently bottom of the list. Nearest person to me has seen 44. I spoke to Sue about me being so far behind and she just made a L shape on her forehead and started saying ‘LOSER LOSER LOSER’. Hmmm what's the point of Fiancée points when they don't earn you any respect.