Basking

Shark, in Birsay Bay was the highlight of the day. It cruised around he surface feeding for the whole time we were there, sometime quite close. I reckoned it was about 16-17 ft, or 8 Great Black-backed Gull lengths, a mighty beast in any case.

Earlier I'd gone east to see some moth traps opened and got a bit of advice on ID from the county recorder, saw a few species I'd not so far encountered like July Highflyer and Haworths Minor, also learnt to distinguish Flame from Red Carpet and got a bit of advice first hand on brown Noctuids.

Looked for the swift and failed, surprise, surprise.

Back at the ranch the Black-tailed Godwit situation got complex with 13 leaving early on, leaving five. When I got back from mothing there was one but later there were six. Of the earlier five one was colour ringed, of the later six none were, so perhaps 24 different birds today. Clearly quite a passage from Iceland through here at the moment.

Here's a blast from the past, recently played at high volume on the new kitchen stereo ... front seats at The Brighton Dome in (I think) 1971 were 60p.