Little things......

Hi readers. In the absence of recent activity I thought while I attempt to catch up with a months worth of blogs, I'd post something childish to amuse you in the interim.

Earlier in the year, after suspecting for sometime my long distance sight is not quite what it should be, I was prescribed glasses. What a difference it has made too - I can now clearly see the numbers on the back of a football shirt to know who I'm shouting at when I need to.

Overall. I have been very surprised as to how well I've adapted to wearing double glazing. In the past I've dreaded the time and thought I would be very self concious of the fact. I didn't want contact lenses as that would be too much of a faff and so resigned myself to settling for the visual double glazing.

The only negative issue I've found after having them for about three months is remembering where I last had them. I only need them for distance and so always have to take them off to read things. I also sometimes forget to take them with me when I go out and for me at the moment, its not cool to tie them to a piece of string and hang them around my neck like any other sensible person would do. I'm actually quite surprised I've not lost them and or broken them yet.

What I have discovered, much to my delight and amusement, is it's added a whole new dimension to my childish behaviour as I have been finding endless opportunities of doing stupid things with them. Once I realised this, I have taken to recording it on my phone. Watch this space for future posts.

Romania - Part 2 Sighisoara to Zarnesti

The next day saw us heading for Zarnesti and our dedicated wildlife watching part of the trip. Besides the occasional sighting unlike other trips our luck seemed to have run out on this one for casually seeing lots of good wildlife without purposefully looking. We hoped to find a couple of birdwatching sites on the way to Zarnesti, given our track record over the previous two days we didn’t hold out much hope.

Just north of the town of Rotbav, we managed to find the unmarked track to the old station halt, behind which lay a complex of heavily stocked and fished carp lakes – (Romanian for carp is Crap). We were fortunate here to find several good birds, once we’d negotiated detours around all the kennels of guard dogs – some on chains and some not. This meant much of what looked the most interesting areas we could not access.

We did manage to see lots of marsh warbler, singing river warbler, marsh frogs, great reed warbler and fieldfare carrying food to their nest, little bittern and purple heron. After spending an hour or so here we headed for our destination at Zarnesti in order to be there for late afternoon in time to be taken on an organised bear watching trip.

Our route to Zarnesti took us through Brazov where we experienced the best to date of our ‘Romanian driving incidents’. We had been given fair warning about Romanian driving prior to our trip and thus far this had proven true. Such was the highlight of our driving experiences I will save it for a blog of its own!

On arrival at Dan Marins’ Transylvanian Wolf abode we were treated to tea and homemade traditional Romanian cake. The directions given to find the accommodation was invaluable – we’d never had found it otherwise.

Our first evening was spent fruitlessly couped in a hide while a tub full of chocolate was deposited outside in the hope the local bears would visit. The beauty of wildlife watching is nothing is a certainty and once again, we managed to sustain our 100% record of not seeing a bear. Things probably didn’t help that it began to rain and the wind got up. Also, forestry operations were still taking place just before sunset which probably did not help. We returned to our accommodation a little disappointed but this was soon satiated by a fantastic spread for a late evening meal all laid on by Luminita Marin – a superb cook and host along with husband Dan.

(c Rotton yarns)

(c Rotton yarns)

Camberwell beauty  (c Rotton yarns)

Globeflower  (c Rotton yarns)

Heart flowered marsh orchid  (c Rotton yarns) 

Ragged robin  (c Rotton yarns)

Roe deer  (c Rotton yarns)

Silver studed blue  (c Rotton yarns)

Slow worm  (c Rotton yarns)

Spreading bellflower  (c Rotton yarns)

Yellow bellied toad  (c Rotton yarns)

Dusky cranesbill  (c Rotton yarns)

Breakfast the next morning picked up where the previous evenings meal had left off – amazing with enough spread to make a substantial packed lunch with to see you through the day ahead in the field with Dan. Once suitably gorged, we set of for a day in the lower alpine hills – stunning scenery and the plants were amazing. One that sticks in my mind most is the hillside cover in Globeflower, all about to break bud. In the UK this species is a rare plant restricted to a few sites. I have visited one of these near Bakewell, where I was fortunate to see a few plants eking an existence in the dappled shade of some scrub. The scene on that mountainside once again put it all into perspective.

We visited many sites with Dan. Some we had seen described in ‘where to watch’ guide books but I’m sure we’d never have found any of them had we not been with Dan. They are just in such obscure locations with no obvious indication of their presence.  After a busy day in the field our banquet of an evening meal once again proved scrumptious – Luminita is an amazing person! Breakfast the next morning followed the usual pattern. We were also given enough again to make our packed lunch for the day’s journey ahead to Brazov. 

Romania - Part 1 Cluj to Sighisoara

As I’m currently imprisoned due to inclement weather, it has given me time to catch up with my trip to Romania at the beginning of June! Was it really that long ago?  It was all part of a cunning ploy to avoid the media hype of a Diamond Jubilee celebration and to see if by visiting the country with more bears than the rest of Europe, we could rectify or misses in California the previous year.

This was a seven night trip which started by flying into Cluj and driving the 300 miles through Transylvania ending in Bucharest from where we flew home. The trip was split into three chunks, travelling about a 100 miles between each staging post. The majority of our time was spent with two nights in Zarnesti and two in Brazov each of which are just 20 miles apart.

After collecting the hire car at Cluj we set off for Sighisoara. We aimed to stop off at the Turda Gorge and at Medias. Wildlife wise it seemed to get off to a good start with stonechat and bee eater seen from the car soon after leaving the town.

Attempting to interpret instructions from the guide book, we got into Turda but found poor signage and the lack of detailed maps meant we couldn’t find the turning, ending up in Campia Turzii. On reaching a junction we attempted to loop back to retrace our steps. The road we found ourselves on was a comparatively new duel carriageway which we discovered had no exits for almost 60 km until you get back to Cluj!! We were able to see where we wanted to get to and from a distance the gorge looked very nice. 

Deciding now to give the gorge a miss, we tried to locate the historic town of Medias, one of the oldest in the country. We managed to get as far as Tarnaveni and once again managed to miss a turn and become horrendously lost. This was much to the amusement of the inhabitants of the town we decided we needed to turn around in and again found it difficult to relate what was on the map with what was on the ground. Detailed maps of Romania do not exist the best we could acquire was a 1:700,000 which are next to useless when trying to find anywhere off the main road.

Not wanting to waste more time, we tried retracing our steps back to a road that would, we hoped, lead us to our destination for the next two nights in Sighisoara. Eventually arriving, we found our accommodation to be right by the entrance into the historic city. After a well-earned rest from our long day, we headed into the town for a relaxing meal and quiet drink before turning in for the night ready for the following days exploration of the town. 

View from hotel room balcony to the Sighisoara clock tower  (c Rotton Yarns)

View from clock tower to hotel - my balcony canopy is in the centre of the picture and our hire car is the  first car on the right in the street below (c Rotton Yarns)

Our day in Sighisoara was spent slowly following the perimeter route of the towns old wall, taking lots of photographs en-route of the historic buildings. There were two notable things about the wildlife in the town; first there were no swifts but lots of house martins. Given the antiquity of the town, this seemed very odd. Also, it was odd to see common redstart sharing the rooftops with their relative, the black redstart. The latter was not a surprise to see, being quite the norm for any European town, but the common redstart was certainly a surprise.

The following are a selection of pictures from around Sighisoara.

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

Later in the day, we attempted to follow instruction in the guide book that would take us to the Brieti ancient oak wood pasture just two miles from the centre of town. Only ten years ago, the site was under threat of being destroyed to make way for a Dracula theme park. It was only after local, national and international objections were the plans shelved.

After several attempts, we eventually found what seemed to fit the directions. However, instead of an oak wood, we found ourselves in a hanging beech wood on the side of the hill with not an oak in sight! Foiled again. The only consolation was the sighting of a lesser spotted eagle which I’ve never seen before.

Part 2 ... and things get slower

Despite the poor weather and my car not having been discharged from the car hospital, I decided to continue my pursuit of attempting to awaken my dormant interest in natural history.
Unfortunately, I don't think this weekends activities done it any favours in the least. The only saving grace was the fact I'd taken my camera which helped keep my sanity and retain the will to live.

Having slowly walked somewhere in the region of a six miles circular route from home, over the period of about 3 hours, I only managed to find thirty species of bird. Its at times like this when you remember why one just cannot be bothered to make the effort anymore!

Although I did find lots of nice plants to photograph, it was so slow that I even resorted to taking pictures of a slug! But it was a particularly big one.

a slug (c Rotton Yarns)

For the record, below is the mornings species list. The highlights for me were undoubtedly the whitethroats and kestrel:

Blackbird

Blackcap

Blue Tit

Carrion Crow

Chaffinch

Chiffchaff

Coal Tit

Cuckoo

Dunnock

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great Tit

Green Woodpecker

House Sparrow

Jackdaw

Kestrel

Linnet

Long-tailed Tit

Magpie

Mistle Thrush

Pied Wagtail

Robin

Skylark

Song Thrush

Starling

Swallow

Swift

Whitethroat

Willow Warbler

Woodpigeon

Wren

A slow day in the field part 1

The middle of the month always heralds the moth trapping and bird ringing sessions at nearby Beeston. The May session, due to the poor weather was particularly slow and I only managed to find seven species of moth in the trap that had been left out overnight. They were:

Green carpet
Muslin moth
Shuttle shaped dart
Hebrew character
Iron Prominent
Common swift
Waved umber

The bird ringing wasn't much better and in fact was so dull that while the ringers were away checking nets at one point, myself and one of the ringers took to playing with two hapless millipedes we'd found lurking in a crevice of the plastic patio table we use to work from. 

First we attempted to see if they would fight each other, this was to no avail. They also seemed disinterested in trying to perform any kind of errr, hum, errr, cough .... anyway I don't suppose I'd be too keen on that kind of thing in front of an audience. The best we could muster from the poor creatures was to race them against each other across the table - it successfully seemed to keep us amused for ages. 

Twang!

This is a classic Mildrew moment of gargantuan proportion but one which ultimately must have been a relief to the driver of the recovery vehicle I called out.

While on the way home from work, my car suddenly lost all power. Fortunately I was able to cruise it into a nearby entrance and walk the 400 metres to my house and phone the RAC. There was an irony to this in that it happened a mere 30 metres from the Cemetery at the edge of town.  

On calling the RAC, it seems they were busy and were not able to get out for a good hour. Wanting to get my monies worth of subscription I decided at the time to tough it out and turn down an offer of a tow up the road to the garage, despite I was supposed to be going out for a meal at 19:30. 

After almost two hours a contract vehicle arrived at 19:30 to assess the problem and rescue the dead car. It seems, as suspected the cambelt had broken - ouch!! He loaded me on and must have been quite relieved at my general joviality despite the long wait and ultimate terminal news. He must have been especially pleased when it also transpired the reason why he was so long at his previous job was the police had to be called out help him recover the vehicle. 

Apparently, rumour has it, he went to recover a car that had been put in a ditch. The owner had seemingly got the car out and was able to park in a nearby pull-in while awaiting recovery. However, the story has it a woman living in the house told him he couldn't park it there and whatever he'd told her elicited a call to her relatives who appeared mob handed and started to smash the car up! This happened just as the recovery vehicle arrived and apparently had to call the police so he could recover the vehicle. All very bizarre and whether true or not is quite an elaborate tale!

After he'd dropped the vehicle off at the car hospital, I was able to persuade him to act as a taxi and drop me off at the venue I was supposed to be eating in only half an hour late and in time to get my order in.

As this is a posthumous post, the cost for getting the car back on the road was not quite as expensive as feared. The bill was more of a redshank rather than a snipe. I prefer goldcrests, but in the light of things, one mustn't complain - redshanks are quite nice too. 

Another wet Bank Holiday

As I'm having to produce a series of posthumous posts, I thought I'd amalgamate my attempts in May to do some natural history.

My first efforts came over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend. This was the 6th and 7th of May. On the Sunday I visited the gravel quarry at Broom which was interesting and productive given the weather wasn't at all conducive and rather living up to what one always expects from a Bank Holiday - cold, wet and miserable.

I managed to find a few warblers including managing to see a lesser whitethroat before a common whitethroat this year. Walking alongside a hedge, I was aware of a common whitethroat singing from within and patiently waited for it to perform its aerial song flight. After a few minutes, nearby, there was a sudden out burst of the distinctive song of lesser whitethroat and the bird broke from its cover and  flitted rapidly away to hide itself further along the hedge. Around the reed fringed pools nearby came the songs of reed warbler, no doubt recently arrived from their Trans-Saharan migration. 


The usual array of waders were present as ever, those being Redshank, Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Ringed and Little ringed plover. 


The following day's walk was cut abruptly short by rain, having only been out for an hour walking the fields closer to home. But just before the rain did set in I was fortunate enough to at least find three migrant Wheatears. Unfortunately, the prospect of a photograph put the birds into panic mode and by the time I'd got my camera ready they had vanished almost as quickly as they'd appeared! How strange as a similar thing occured last autumn at the same place when I found a Whinchat. 


The following is a species list for the two days

06-May	07-May
Blackcap	Blackbird
Black-headed Gull	Blackbird
Buzzard	Blackcap
Buzzard	Blackcap
Canada Goose	Blue Tit
Canada Goose	Blue Tit
Chiffchaff	Carrion Crow
Common Swift	Carrion Crow
Common Tern	Chaffinch
Coot	Coal Tit
Coot	Collared Dove
Gadwall	Dunnock
Goldfinch	Goldcrest
Great Crested Grebe	Goldfinch
Great Crested Grebe	Greenfinch
Green Woodpecker	Jackdaw
Grey Heron	Jackdaw
Grey Heron	Linnet
Greylag Goose	Long-tailed Tit
Greylag Goose	Long-tailed Tit
House Martin	Magpie
Lapwing	Robin
Lapwing	Rook
Lesser Black-backed Gull	Skylark
Lesser Whitethroat	Starling
Linnet	Wheatear
Little Grebe	Woodpigeon
Little Ringed Plover	Woodpigeon
Mallard	Yellowhammer
Mallard
Moorhen
Moorhen
Oystercatcher
Redshank
Reed Warbler
Ringed Plover
Sand Martin
Sand Martin
Shelduck
Song Thrush
Swallow
Swallow
Swift
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Whitethroat
Willow Warbler
Yellowhammer