Monday 18 February 2008

But still the sun shines

As expected, there were corpses of Guillemots on the beach this morning. I covered three of them up, to prevent scavenging crows from ingesting the oil.

Looking at reports of oiled birds in Dorset, the Isle of Wight and Sussex recently, they seem to follow the progress of the timber from the sunk ship - however, the oil is apparently not the same as in that ship, and there are suggestions that other ships have taken the opportunity to clean out their tanks near the wreck to avoid blame - good grief.

There was only one auk visible on the sea (flapping its wings, as if oiled unfortunately), but there were six Great Crested Grebes and a passage south of divers, including at least one Great Northern.

The Black-Headed Gulls are developing their dark heads, as shown by the three models below:
Coltsfoot flowers shone brightly in the sunshine, and are starting to grow leaves - the plant is also known as Son-before-Father, because the flowers are followed by the leaves.

The umbiliferae are sprouting fast on the verges, with Wild Carrot and Hogweed flower stems shooting up.Yes, still the sun shines - all but one day in the last two weeks has been sunny (if not particularly warm). Good for walking.

1 comment:

Rosie said...

A real shame about those lovely birds...