Big Up Basil

 Yes indeedy, there's still not much happening at Galley. A trickle of common migs in the last few days, with sedge warbler, house martin, sandwich tern and blackcap all gleaned, but not a lot else.

Things got so bad that I was forced to go and validate Basil's red-rumped swallow that he found at Squinse, and has steadfastly refused to document here so far. This is fine though, as I get to showcase my amazeballs pics thusly:

A red-rumped swallow yester, er last week, er ages ago

Proof of life, as Basil has a bit of a history with wild swallow claims....

Not many swallows about

There's been very little of note happening on patch recently. While the 19-CORVID lockdown means IN THEORY there's more time dossing about and plenty of opportunity to thrash the 2km radius around the house, Sybil is similarly restricted, so there's an inevitable list of  "The Jobs" to get through.

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week, for example, putting up a new greenhouse and building some rustic shelves out of old palletes to hold trays of seedlings.

I don't have any bird pictures to share, so here's the greenhouse
FFS! #DIWhy

Couple that with a limited level of enthusiasm for traipsing around patch for hours seeing fuck all and there's not much to report. Still, Seppy has been bleating on about updating the blog, so here you go.

Despite things being as pedestrian as expected, the arrival of the first swallows and sand martins, blackcap, chiff, willow warbler, an early sedgie, finally nailing dipper for the year and a few "undeclared" bits and bobs nudges the tally up to 78.88%.

That's me (temporarily) back on the podium then. Happy days!

Washing line strikes again!

The washing line is a great place for picking up impromptu year ticks. So much so that you'll even find me VOLUNTEERING to hang stuff out (and on any rarity scale me volunteering to do anything is going to be right up there).

This weeks washing line bounty was the first swallow back on patch... followed by a collared dove (a la the extremely dodgy digibinned-with-the-mobile and cropped half to death shot attached). Tricky enough bird on patch... so a bit of a coo to get it (sorry... couldn't resist)!

House martin turned up yesterday evening too taking me to 66 -- which in real money puts me on 80%