Aside Post
While chopping logs in the garden, had a female sparrow hawk visit, without prey, and an hour later the first for this garden a tree creeper, on the peanut feeder, then to the Sorbus trees, as I was pointing a camera at it, then of course it flew. One of the most difficult birds to photograph in my opinion.
Aside Post
two pics from latest trip and two for guessing what they are
Dec 27th by neilgd under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
PART 2
I had not intended to wait a year as per Ian’s comment for Part 2, but somehow here we are a year on!!
We stayed for four days at Bird safari Camp in our en-suite tent along with a number of other travellers wanting to escape the Christmas hype and do some birding instead. The camp was everything that we had hoped for with wonderful friendly staff, fantastic food all overseen by the boss lady Binta.
Mornings were spent on early walks at 7am with our guide Lamin who was expertly knowledgeable on all of the birds by …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boswellia_sacra
This incense is under threat according to news i heard, the Boswellia Sacra tree produces incense when tapped like a rubber tree. It grows in north East Africa, Yemen and Oman. Cited causes of decline are climate change, over tapping and over grazing.
From Yellow taxi, ” well you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone”, and Elton ” its sad. so sad, its a sad sad situation” its all in the songs but we don’t learn from them or any other medium.
Been trying to get the Science magazine that has an article on the plight of …
Dec 17th by neilgd under Travels, my Friends travels
During my recent trip to Ghana, in addition to the birds there were many other natural wonders to view. Â In particular were the butterflies; Ghana has over 1000 species in comparison to the 50 or so species that we have in the UK. Â On a single morning walk we saw more than the total number of UK species – the photos are a few species that I managed to photograph.…
Dec 17th by neilgd under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
I have just returned from an eleven day birding trip in Ghana with Ashanti African Tours (www.ashantiafricantours.com). The eleven days were fully packed with birding and travelling the significant distances between the main birding sites. On arrival on Saturday night at Kotoka International Airport in Accra I was met by my two guides for the 11 days and transferred to our hotel at around 11pm. After checking in, the guides informed me that breakfast the next day was at 4.30am, leaving the hotel at 5am; this was the case for the remainder of the trip except for a …
I have been trying to follow this Euro pack debate and economists make some sense as you can follow their line of thinking be it with a slant from banking to industrialists. While the politicians make little sense, unless you happen to be that naive to believe them. Recently PM Cameron is both lauded and denounced particularly by the word press and I have to say on the radio, much my preferred news medium. But although it’s obviously complicated why is it so difficult to predict where the UK will be now Cameron has dealt his (our) veto card? and …
Status
Very happy with this new blog design and the new logo, Im sure everyone can guess the bird in the logo, I know Dad can!
Well as you can see I have revamped your blog with my brand new theme (still in beta)! You will see in the admin that you have some “theme options” and when writing posts you can now use a variety of formats (I’ll show you what these are all about).
This is a belated birthday gift as I just couldnt finish the damn thing in time (probably because I didnt start it early enough). Its still a work in progress however so updates will be fairly regular!
Ive also upgraded to the latest version and done all your plugins too.…
Dec 2nd by Ian under Miscellaneous
When you see a crowd of photographers around a celeb or person notorious, you see/hear many £k’s worth of cameras on multishot or continuous shot. I just wondered about the number of photos now taken daily in the digital age? Most phones have cameras, ipods, tablets all take photos. Lets have an estimate just to get a number, lets say a quarter of the population have a means to take a photo, 7 billion/ 4 = 1.75 billion and they take a photo at least once per week, that’s 91 billion annually, and for a range say once per day …
Dec 2nd by Ian under Travels, my Friends travels
Tags: aerial pictures, alex strachan, Scatsta
Its not that often you can see the land so clearly flying into Scatsta, however flying in on the 15th Nov I had the right seat and the right weather. What you are seeing is the west coast of the island from dropping through the cloud just south of Brae to land at Scatsta. These are not remarkable photographs but what I wanted to bring your attention to was the isolation of farmhouses and the tracks that can lead to good birding spots. But is this isolation part or wholly the reason for the community spirit that exists where er …
Nov 10th by Ian under Bird Watching, Miscellaneous
On leave from the Shetlands, the mist at home lifted, the sun came out and I wheezed up Kinnoul hill in Perth. Heard long tailed tits with blues and greats, a pair of jays and a buzzard. Saw ravens, longtailed tits, jackdaws and a peregrine that obligingly went into a stoop over Barnshill and disappeared from my view. Meanwhile I was snapping with my panasonic DMC FZ7 and my Canon EOS 550 D, you can see the comparison above, the canon shots are on top and the brighter less real shots are the panasonics below. The canon camera to my …
Nov 6th by Ian under Materials and Construction
Tags: doc control, oil and gas QA/QC, QA, SGP
Being used to the role of principal contractor,then being a sub-contractor needs a mindset change, that comes through the contract and the impositions necessarily put on you. The Shetlands Gas Plant (SGP) Laggan-Tormore had a bigger surprise waiting, lurking menacingly, unseen, unexpected in the Totality of it’s monstrous dimensions – documents for QA. The whole team have no experience of the level of documentation required, I guess we are somewhat spoiled in transportation where the client has the testing required tabulated and “bare” appendices for designers to complete, from this I in the past have complied many test and inspection …
Nov 5th by Ian under Bird Watching, Travels, my Friends travels
Tags: sullom voe, wintering merlins
I will post about the Shetlands project separately, I want to give you a flavour of the island from a brief respite of time off. On a Sunday I dropped the guys off and took the pool car for a drive in the reduced daylight we get up here. First I was obliged to watch a boring GP from India, kinda glad its going to Sky sports next year as I don’t subscribe, therefore the link of “must watch” will be broken.
Going from Sella Ness (home) I stopped at a community woodland walk by an old quarry before you …