Dragonflight

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeYTylOd6As

 

 

It's the high summer and across the land the same refrain - "To The Woods".  Purple Emperors were on the wing at Ditton Park Wood from at least the 6th July and a few more were searching the sallows in the sunlight on the 7th.  The following weekend I headed, in cloud, to Fermyn.  Not the best display of Emperors with only a couple of groundings in a full day out but, thanks to Toby Ludlow, I did see my first ever Abb - aberration, an almost Black Emperor which did a couple of low fly pasts but didn't settle.  Toby had seen 3 together a couple of days before, after 50 years of searching.  I felt a bit of a charlatan having only spent the last 8 years committing to keeping each year Purple.  Below is the best shot of the grounded male of the day and I have nicked a photograph of one of the abbs taken by John Wiltshire and posted on The Purple Empire.

 

 

 

Silver Washed Fritillary, White Admirals and Purple Hairstreaks provided diversion between the Emperoring which produced just over 20 sightings during the day.

 





Napoloeon, Augustus Caesar, MIng The Merciless, Palpatine, Theodosius III - all Emperors

God-what?

I've been watching the Godwits at Welney for a couple of weeks. Here is a selection of photos from just that short period of time, as a taster for a series of posts I intend to put up here on the subject of the problems of telling limosa from islandica. 

Where would you draw the line? What criteria would you use? Should you even care?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                    

                                

                                

                               

                                

                                

                                

                               

                                                                                                                                             

                               

                                

                               

                                

                                

                                

god I hate computers.

This is a test. It's a test of my patience mainly - but more significantly, it's a test to see if things still work.

Strictly speaking, the answer is yes. But only in the sense that a horse "works". yeah - a horse is fine. But it's not a car. It doesn't look like a car, work like a car or is as comfortable as a car. And it needs more attention. And is harder to understand.

I'm talking about my computer. My computer is now a horse. I don't understand it and I don't know what it does. i suspect it does some things i want it to do - but I'm buggered if i know how it will do those things - or how to get it to do those things. And, like a horse - it will not tell me how to do the things it can do. It doesn't even tell me what things it can do. i have to guess apparently.

Everything is different. I've upgraded to windows 10 because...reasons. apparently windows whatever I had was not good enough anymore. Not good enough? That's a bold claim to make you millennials out there - but it was good enough at one time- and forgive me if I don't just take your word for it, especially if you think the thing that is good enough is a fricking horse. 

Because apparently I no longer need to know what all the buttons mean. Apparently i can't just look at my photos before some A hole of a computer has fiddled with it and auto sharpened it - sometimes.

Apparently the simple tasks i used to perform needed mixing up a bit so now every time I crop an image it saves a copy somewhere - I don't know where - no, honestly -I don't know where it saves them. They just disappear. sometimes they reappear in random places, sometimes they don't.

And then the computer has the gall to say that the "onedrive" is full!! Well who filled it up? I don't even know what a onedrive is - or where to find it. I emptied it - so now I don't know what i have just thrown away.

I could go on. I haven't even started yet. Like the way it shows the folders. It used to be the case that i could open the page and all my folders would be there, represented by a random photo that was one of hte photos contained within. That seems like a good system doesn't it? I'm looking for my folder of Little stints - scan down the page and stop at the picture of a Little stint- the name clearly written underneath to be sure.

But no - that was far too easy. No - the new way to display my folder is as a picture of a slightly open folder with some photos just peeking out, all piled up on one another so you can't see what any of them are.

look at some bees. ignore the fact that the font has for some reason changed. I didn't do it. I'm not even sure if it will be different when this post is published. I'm still fuming at the fact that when i opened up the blog like normal - it asked me to sign in. of course i didn't know my password- i never have to sign in. So i called its bluff- and sure enough, upon returning to the blog page it suddenly recognised me. What a twat of a world we live in. Actually being pranked by my own computer. IT WILL RUE THE DAY!!!

If I press publish now, only to find that the photos suddenly go out of alignment - there will be trouble.