13 February
It is hard life out here, as Chris keeps telling me every time
he sees me. So bad I usually spend about 14 weeks a year out of the country,
and the second of 2012 is coming up at the end of this week so this could the
last post for a bit and spring is really up and running. Birding this weekend was
almost totally off-island, but I did unexpectedly fall in with a tick on
Saturday afternoon. It should also shut the rest of them up for a bit as it was
from a bike. The only tick, I would think, I will get from a bike all year.
Nobody with a few interlinking brain neurones, never mind an ounce of common
sense, would consider cycling out here; the trucks are massive and roads bigger
and most of the drivers are either reckless lunatics or underfed and overworked
labourers who haven’t slept properly for days. I can well imagine what one of
them shaving past me an inch too close along the Eastern Lagoon would do to my
bones, never mind my Swarovskis. So, as you have probably worked out by now,
the ‘bike’ was an exercise bike. The bird, also the only tick I can ever recall
getting whilst being blasted by loud music (not Metallica this time;sorry Simon) was
a Pale Crag Martin that appeared
over the swimming pool on the other side of the glass doors. It actually took
me a couple of minutes to register that it was #100 (there wasn’t much blood
getting to my brain at that point) and then to curse that it had probably flown
over the balcony (only 50m to the right) before I got onto it. See, told you it
was a hard life.
OSCAR
Total so far - 100 (56%)
Last addition – Pale Crag Martin (11 February)
"Nobody with a few interlinking brain neurones, never mind an ounce of common sense, would consider cycling out here"
ReplyDeleteRewind to Abu Dhabi spring 2009 and I distinctly remember one Oscar J Campbell repeatedly saying he was considering getting a bicycle! Selective memory or the result of a mother's wisdom?!