So It's Merry Xmas from Mary, and Happy Xmas from Grumpy!

Ooops, sorry about the delay. What with Strictly, SPOTY, and the Apprentice, I got my priorities wrong!

Right, let’s understand one another.   Next Sunday, my usual Post-a-blog day, is Christmas Day – are you seriously expecting me to tear myself away from an hour of Coro and an hour of East Enders to write some uninteresting birding guff. I would only be writing about the bacon, black pudding, mushrooms and tomato full-English breakfast, or the flavour of the Xmas lunch turkey and I couldn’t blame those vegetarian amongst you not wanting to hear this sort of unsavoury (actually, it is savoury!) language. Also having to desert my duties as Cocktail waitress, sorry waiter, barman AND pot man, would be unfair to our guests.

So, sorry and all that but after this diatribe, you will have to wait for the next until you receive the 

New Years’ Day bonanza which I envisage posting on 1^st January 2017 at about 11.00pm.   Which means (and you may have noticed) it gets delivered to your computer at c6.15am. Now that’s a personal start to your day, right? and even if you don’t have your Broad-sheet or Redtop delivered, you do get your Allesbirdtree report to read with the soft boiled and soldiers.

So to end 2016 some newsy snippets.

The Dusky Thrush was certainly the high spot in Derbyshire. Seen near the Dukes Barn at Beeley near Chatsworth, it attracted a huge number of twitchers during its 11 days stay.  I’ve had 3 Xmas cards including the question “Have you seen…etc”..YES I know all about it, and NO I haven’t.

After a good spell, the Thrush decide to hide for 3 days, and the residents of Beeley probably thought life would get back to normal. But it’s been found again, and at 9.30 this morning (Monday). I’m hoping it will still be around at January 1 and I can start 2017 with a Mega. Tell you what, if it is, the Beeley folk will find things busier than the Next sales!

Mary and I have done fund raising for the Derby Royal School for the Deaf, and the previous Duke granted the school the right to use the Barn as an outdoor activity centre for deaf children, so I went there several times. I was very pleased that the £3 parking charge to see the Dusky was going to a good cause.  No doubt the landlord at the Devonshire Arms in the village, was equally pleased with the surge in business!

My Dad was a newspaper journalist and he used to buy the Daily Mail on the way to work, and with his free copy of the Bristol Evening World, we always had newspapers around the house. Now with instant news on TV and the net, so few people seem to have a daily paper. There are 8 houses in our road – we are the only people who put 26 newspapers a fortnight in the blue bin!

But newspapers give us so much information, and you can read and re-read items of interest, so in future I intend to share with you Birding snippets that you may have missed.  Like………..

Have you heard about Wisdom? She is the world’s oldest known seabird, a Laysan albatross, who is expecting another chick… at the age of 66! You can appreciate that there are a few estimates, but Wisdom is said to have been born in 1951, had her id ring replaced 6 times, and flown well over 3 million miles.

Congratulations to Amanda and Christine for achieving their 12 month target of 200 species, for the first time. Amanda crossed the line with a Surf Scoter, followed by a Firecrest at 201, and a Waxwing was Chris’s 200, followed by a Ruddy Duck.

I dropped into Old Moor during the week, and added Red Legged Partridge to take me to 181, the final figure for the year I suspect! 

The Carsington Volunteer Rangers met on Saturday and agreed to proceed with the Janet Ede hide on Stones Island. This project is to be their contribution to the 2017 celebrations for the 25^th anniversary of the opening of Carsington Water.

Talking figures, this blog post you are reading is my 50^th, started in December 2015, and has been hit in 52 weeks 3,477 times. (This total includes UK 2,397; Russia 341 and USA 176.)

Whereas this photo of a Sainsbury bakery counter taken 3 weeks ago, has been “hit” 6,524 times!

Ed: It’s beyond me as to why you would take that picture?..and why would anyone want to look at it?

                                 

So to end the year, Mary and I send our best wishes for a very happy Xmas, and a bird-rich 2017, and we leave you with the Xmas cracker joke of the year…

Two Indian junkies accidentally snorted curry powder instead of cocaine.  Both in hospital... one's in a korma... The other's got a dodgy tikka!

Mary and David

PS: Next Bird walk IS 1^st January 2017 at 10.00am +/- 5 minutes!!