27th-28h February. Great White Bites Back

Friday was a complete washout and Saturday was going to be difficult for numerous reasons. A cunning plan involving ironing and general housewife duties was hatched in order to get across to Mirfield for the Ring-billed Gull. Thirty minutes into the ironing I sneaked a peak at RBA only to go into a headless chicken rare bird flap - "Great White Egret Thrybergh Tip flew south at 7:07" bugger south of Thrybergh is RV and other various suitable water bodies. With only 15 minutes having passed since its departure the Iron was switched off and Beth hurriedly dressed I headed to Blue-mans Bower, Catcliffe, Treeton and Orgreave all of which had no big white herons. It later transpired that the egret was found not by the regular watcher but by another with a less than perfect reputation. Fortunately for the latter he managed several photos removing any doubt over this record - which goes to prove that it's no always wise to bandy around the stringer label, because sometimes 'stringers' find rare birds!

Back at the ironing pile I managed to pull back enough brownie points to make a trip to the Ring-billed, which I managed to pick up after it had disappeared for a while. Still terribly rare in Yorkshire with only two twitchable and frustratingly absent from my RV list following a short staying adult in 96.


Despite the cold weather set back of last weekend some signs of spring are starting to appear for instance snow drops and singing Skylarks, but a more noticeable feature during the milder days has been the appearance of fruit on the Dog Shit Tree. These curious specimens began to appear around twelve years ago but have recently begun to occur more regularaly particularly around public parks and wooded areas.

Picking the fruit of the dog shit tree is not to be recommended