Tuesday 18 October 2011

October 18th 2011

After heavy rain and strong winds last night the sky’s cleared and the mercury dropped so dug out the long johns before venturing out to the pond with Bob.

I had 2 more Short-eared Owls at the pond.

The first came in from the North West at 09:40 over farborough spit and flew towards toft hill where the local corvids saw it on its way and it continued towards the A45/Only Prison area and appeared to go down. The second also came in at 11:15 from the north west over Bourton Hall towards the valve tower where the local Rooks ganged up on it and escaped north over the golf course. Because both birds came in from the same direction and at some height I don’t think they were yesterday’s bird but probably individuals from last week’s influx re-orientating themselves.
Only other highlight was a House Martin heading south over the country park other wise a quiet breezy visit with only 2 Goldeneye, 2 Goosander and 7 Buzzard entered in my notebook.

Out with Mark and Pa Phillips down the valley tonight where there is less light pollution to look for various objects in the night sky with very good views of the Andromeda Galaxy which is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and is approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth. Well worth looking for despite it being very cold and we had at least 3 meteorites including one with a fiery tail.

Richard

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