white_hart

I am really not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, and in particular to finding out (a) how many emails have accumulated in my absence and (b) how many job applications I'm going to need to read before Tuesday afternoon's shortlisting meeting for the first of three vacancies I'll be recruiting to over the next six weeks or so*.

Still, I have had a good break, and done lots of sewing and swimming. And on today's swim we saw a kingfisher, sitting so still I actually managed to photograph it.

A jumble of riverside foliage, including an upright branch on top of which is perched a kingfisher.

* the fact that one of my team has put a meeting in my calendar for 9:30 tomorrow saying that she needs to talk to me as soon as possible suggests that I may have another recruitment process to deal with soon, too.

We drove back from Yorkshire yesterday via the Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve, where we were much too late for the puffins, but saw a large number of gannets, as well as catching a glimpse of their celebrity visitor of the season, a black-browed albatross.

I took lots of photos of the gannets, but the albatross was moving far too quickly for my camera.

A group of gannets (white with pale yellow heads and black wing-tips) on a rocky cliff.

The drive back was a lot better than the drive up, mostly because we were on the M1 rather than the A1, but it's still a long way to drive in one day (217 miles from the Tesco in Bridlington where I bought petrol to my house, according to the car) with only one brief stop for lunch. I was shattered by the time I got home and then ended up with my head spinning and my neck and shoulders feeling very peculiar, presumably because of spending such a long time sitting in the same position. (Hunching forward and clutching the steering wheel in a death-grip probably didn't help, but I don't understand how anyone is supposed to be relaxed while steering a large metal box at 70mph surrounded by other, often larger, metal boxes also going at 70mph.)

It was a good holiday, but driving nearly 600 miles in a week, with very few driving-free days, definitely wasn't ideal.

I glanced out of the window in passing earlier, did a double-take and shouted to T to ask him to bring me my camera, because there was a sparrowhawk sitting on the fence.

A male sparrowhawk with a grey-blue back and head and pink and white front feathers perching on a fence.

It stayed for a few minutes, until one of the local cats came sauntering along the top of the block of garages at the end of the gardens, spotted it and showed distinct signs of thinking about leaping down from the garages to catch it. I'm not entirely convinced the cat would have come off best in that altercation, but the sparrowhawk clearly decided that discretion was the better part of valour and flew off, leaving a disgruntled-looking cat behind.

It's the last weekend in January, which means it's the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. As anyone who's ever tried doing it knows, invariably bird numbers during whatever hour you spend counting will be far lower than they normally are wherever you are, but I still managed to see:

Five goldfinches
Three robins, who spent all the time trying to chase each other off
Two greenfinches
Three great tits
A siskin
Two blackbirds
T, refilling the feeders
A blackcap
A chaffinch
A dunnock
A pale ginger kitten in the garden two doors down
A man in pyjamas, also in the garden two doors down, scattering grass seed
The orange and white cat we often see around
A starling in the tree on the other side of the garage blocks

Of course, ten minutes after I'd finished a bullfinch came and sat in the tree by the fence, and ten minutes after that there were five siskins and about a dozen goldfinches.

Big Garden Birdwatch results in our garden:

3 dunnocks
2 sparrows
2 great tits
1 blue tit
1 collared dove
1 robin

A pretty fair representation of the birdlife in our garden; I think I have seen a wren at least once and recently we have both seen a bullfinch. And I'm quite surprised we managed a whole hour without any pigeons galumphing about.

Crossposts: http://white-hart.livejournal.com/779749.html

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December 2025

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