I'm looking after a baby blue tit that Michael found at work. The full story's on my other blog if you want to know more about it, but I thought I'd post a few pics here.


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Had a nice walk along the towpath of Cromford Canal yesterday. It's been years since I've been to Cromford (actually, since I was at school and did a history project on Richard Arkwight who built a cotton mill there - it was apparently a catalyst for the Industrial Revolution), and I've never actually been to the canal.

It's rather pretty. Too many ( Read more... )

Went to Carr Vale nature reserve today with my dad. It's only a few miles away from us, and most of it used to be spoil heaps from the former coal mines nearby.

I'm not sure what I was expecting but I was surprised at how nice the place is, with water and young trees and some great views when you get high up. It's a nice walk around there.

Some great ( Read more... )

Thursday
My alarm failed to go off so I woke up at 10am. And I had a singing lesson in Pittsmoor at 11.15. Arse. So I called my dad, who very kindly drove me into Sheffield so I'd actually manage to get there.

The lesson itself went well, Pete says there's nothing wrong with my voice and it sounds nice, but can be improved as all the (small) things I ( Read more... )

I have loads and loads to catch up on, so I’ll be brief. Ish.

Last weekend I met Nic and Jan for the first time, which was really nice. Oh and I met Jan’s dog Emma too, who will forever be referred to as Little Dog (since Summer is usually just Dog or The Dog, I don’t see why Emma should be left out). We went for a walk, had lunch and ( Read more... )

I got the dipper ( Read more... )

Well, things of note recently ( Read more... )

Some pictures for your enjoyment. Bear in mind that Michael's still very new to this digiscoping lark, and to be fair our scope is on the cheap and nasty side, so a lot of these are somewhat out of focus. But as you'll see, they are shots we'd never have got if he'd just been using the camera.


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Okay, this might take a while.

Friday
Made an attempt to learn Spem in alium for the BBC4 thing, but gave up quite quickly as it's strangely difficult to actually remember the tune - it's not at all intuitive and as the words repeat over and over you can't pair the tune up with the text at all. I thought I might as well just suss it out on Saturday ( Read more... )

Went to Walton Dam again this afternoon (just for an hour) , Michael wanted to take some photos of the water and I, as usual wanted to look at birds.

The female swan is still sitting on the nest - she's been there ages so it shouldn't be too long before the cygnets hatch.

Birds today were: tufted duck, mallard, canada goose, coot, moorhen, mute swan, ( Read more... )