Sunday, 29 July 2012

Aix marks the spot


This weekend a friend, Debs, came to stay. Yesterday, as I left to fetch her from the station, a programme ended on Radio Four, on the hell-fire and damnation loss of habitat in the Paraguayan Chaco. In the background of the credits I could hear the excited trill of monk parakeets and for that moment I was at home again in the dust in the sweat with the thousand thousand grey brocket deer of South America's great spiny forest.

A little further, in Norfolk now, a Roesel's bush-cricket sang from the fading grasses of the verge, audible even above the purr of my ageing diesel car.

Today Debs and I had lunch with her friends Trevor and Jane at their lovely quirky flinty home in North Norfolk. Nearby we walked in Felbrigg Park where green woodpeckers hopped in the grass, a dowdy pink-billed mandarin drake bustled across the lake, and the heavens hurled their thunder and their rain at us.

Tonight the sky is pearl-streaked and pink and the clover glows ghostly in the going light.



New with new friends today

Birds

846
mandarin duck
Aix galericulata


2012 Totals

Mammals: 80
Birds: 846
Reptiles: 20
Amphibians: 7
Fish: 6

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