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Bengal Tiger, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.

Well, that week went quickly, didn’t it Dear Reader? I spent a large proportion of yesterday uploading football photos to the cloud; I hadn’t anticipated how long it would actually take and so was just using my new machine without the power cable connected and to eek out that extra bit from the battery, I turned off WiFi and used a traditional wired network connection instead. Amazingly the estimated battery life, which is pretty good anyway, went from an impressive 4 hours to an astonishing 8 hours! These estimates are usually massively exaggerated, however I did find that the laptop did stay the distance, even with me turning off power save mode on the monitor etc as it was causing the upload to stall. Pretty impressive.

Another thing I forgot to mention from last weekend; whilst out trying to track down the Short Eared Owls along Pagham Harbour, we happened upon a nesting site for some Little Egrets something I’ve never seen in this country before. Something else I had not witnessed was the bird’s call which was quite extraordinary; the call was unlike any I’ve been able to subsequently find on the Internet, whether on the RSPB website or other resources I use frequently. It did sound more like something that would have come out of the Disney Studios and would have been voiced by Clarence Nash – Donald Duck – it really was a strange sound (of course it could have been another twitcher in deep cover trying to trick us!).

Since this blog is turning into a roundup of week – another thing I learnt this week, this time whilst researching Adder. Unlike most other reptiles, adders actually give birth to live young. Once born, the babies do have to fend for themselves immediately though may stay near mother for a couple of days, though being able to produce and use venom from day one they aren’t exactly defenceless. Oh and if you’re wondering,they’re about the size of an earthworm when they emerge from their mother.

I had hoped to post some new pictures today (I still have some to sort through, but they’re old hat now) and am in fact sitting besides my camera which is pointing at a feeding station, waiting for a bird or two to happen by but nothing much is happening despite of (or maybe because of) the wonderful weather conditions. At the moment all I seem to be taking pictures of are the flies that are resting right where I want a bird to land; the fish in our aquarium, located just behind where I’ve positioned myself have swum to the front of the tank and appear to be looking over my shoulder, trying to see what I’m looking at. I’m sure I heard one of them snigger just then – if they’re not careful I’ll be using them for bait to hopefully attract a Kingfisher into the garden.