Woooosh…. and that was September gone! I suppose the fact that I was not in England
for half the month had a bearing on the situation.
The good news at the start of the September was that the
Carsington reservoir was 94.8% full. Not much more and horseshoe island may get
back to looking like a horseshoe. In the meantime, the waters edge and
hopefully waders, are much closer for birding
Sunday 1st September,
I joined Amanda’s BwB walk, spurred on by the news that
there had been 3 or 4 Osprey sightings in the previous week (a sure sign that
they were starting their long journey back to the Gambia), as well as one early
on the morning of the walk!! Despite diligent sky watching we all dipped, and
the consolation were the tumbling ravens over Hall Wood.
In the evening Mary and I spent the evening, with thousands
of others, enjoying an outdoor concert in
Darley Park. The music, of a light classical nature celebrated various golden
anniversaries and culminated in a good firework display performed to the music
by Franz van Suppe, The Light Cavalry Overture. Stirring stuff at full forte in
the open air.
The only early departures I noticed were 2 Great Spotted
Woodpeckers leaving for a quieter area!!
September 11 > 25 we were once again in Cyprus at the
Atlantica Bay hotel in Amathus, East of
Limassol. We have been there before,
and perhaps, influenced by my begging letter, we were rewarded with a luxurious
Junior Suite complete with a Jacuzzi on the balcony .….. and a bottle of bubbly
as a further reward for our loyalty.
Apart from a 3-hour thunderstorm, we had good hot weather,
and I was able to do a smidgeon of birding.
By way of a trip out, we took a bus to Limassol from outside
the hotel to a huge but grossly underused shopping centre at the end of the
line, called My Mal. (45 minute journey £1.35… that’s good value, especially as
we heard of a guest who got ripped off on a 15 minute taxi journey for 100
euros!!)
My Mal is close to Akrotiri, the English military base and a
good birding area, with reeds, salt beds and water. The walk from the shopping
centre was a bit far, especially as it was very hot, but we soon found a useful
tower hide with good views over the reeds. An English couple resident in Cyprus
came in while we were there, so we had a useful chat about birding in the area.
Our first bird, squealing like a piglet, was a Water Rail
skulking in the reeds. In our short visit the most frequent sightings were of Bee
eaters, many of them dashing about above the reed tops. A Crested lark was a
nice sighting, a bird I recall seeing many times in Holland a good few years
ago, but which is an absolute rarity in England… they obviously do not like
crossing water!!
As we did not have transport, we could only salivate on the
information about the locations and birds that could be seen in the Akrotiri
marshes such as Flamingos a-plenty,
groups of Hoopoes, and what our fellow birders had come to find, Honey
Buzzards.
Recalling our early days of visiting the Atlantica Bay
hotel, when the hotel stood alone with just rough land around (but not now,
especially since Abramovich** spent his Roubles coastal building and disrupting
the view), I did manage a couple of short hill walks, and despite the paucity
of birds at 5pm (probably influenced by the large population of feral cats) my
efforts were rewarded by a Lifer!!!
What was quite clearly a dove of sorts, I was able to
identify as a pair of Laughing Doves feeding on one of the few green bushes. If
you don’t know this species, and they are mainly confined to the extreme South
East of Europe, have a look at Collins (or Google!!). Doesn’t help my 2019 UK
list, but it was a nice addition to my somewhat meagre European Life list.
Anything else? No, apart from Hooded Crows; I gather that is
the only Crow they have in Cyprus – No Carrion C’s.
This is meant to be my September report, but I will cheat a
bit and include Tuesday 1st October at Idle Valley with Chris and
Gill!!
STOP PRESS………… With heavy precipitation in sight, and
Idle Valley having no hides, our planned October 1 bird walk is now the 8th
October.
…. And a convenient link(!!) to a message from Carsington that
the water level has “dropped from 95.9% to 92.7% this week in readiness for
the large amounts of heavy rain we’re expecting over this next period.” Which one can anticipate will put a
heavy volume on the Derwent
…and this led to a flashback 40+ years ago. When I worked at Lehane Mackenzie and Shand (later
to become known as just Shand) we had a subsidiary called Lemand (see the red
letters!!) Motor centre, with outlets at Bakewell and Matlock. And the small Matlock
branch backed on to the river Derwent.
With impending high water, and our car show room very liable to flooding,
I found myself urgently repeatedly driving our two chauffeurs to Matlock, so
that with trade plates, they could move all the cars to the safe haven of our
Head Office at Darley Dale.
Quite how I got involved as an Accountant (Special Projects) - I suppose it was all hands to the pump!!!!
Finally, a further NHS experience. When I started work visits to the Middle East
in the 70’s, I had a programme of the requisite tropical injections which were
administered over a relatively short period.
I was reminded of this last Saturday when I fully used the NHS system at
my GP surgery, by having at the same time an injection of Vitamin B12, a flu
vaccine injection, and as compensation
an extraction of 3 phials of blood. Sadly, they had no smiley-face plasters for
the 3 wounds!!
In my QI section, the most significant thing I could find
happened 60 years ago on 3rd October1959. Post codes were
introduced. Remember the blue dots that used to be on envelopes, and people
worrying they could lead to contamination!!!?
And who could have predicted how this would lead to sat navs? We just
thought it was to help sort letters for the post-man!
Happy Birding
** Oh by the way, the home built by Abramovich is on the market for 16 million euros!!
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