Outdoorsy Shite Top Trumps: March

[Slubberdegullion]

Flora or Fauna.

Extra points for a photo.

Handicap will apply to those in Forrin. Monthly win will not automatically go to, for example, a Cougar spot. The Cougar will need to be doing something awesome, like fighting a bear or doing sudoku.

AIBU, make the most of nineteen degrees. You know that as soon as summer comes, the cloud will come and the weather will be awful.

I had the best spring feeling on Saturday - just basking in the sun, and feeling actually hot for the first time in months. I could smell the suncream - I always get caught out in March - and hear the gulls squabbling. Oh it was 'andsome!

We went for a 16 mile walk and I felt hot in a t shirt the entire day. The smell of the mayblossom is what does it for me.

Top nature spot on aforementioned walk: five swallows swooping gleefully above a steaming heap of straw/manure.

A pair of nuthatches by the canal, and the curlews are back on the Pennines - hurrah! Saw and heard a pair yesterday.

Curlews are one of my very favourite sounds.

I saw a load of curlews in a field (near the Lune estuary) but that was last month. I've never thought of them as seasonal - do they head to the warmth of the coast in winter and then some move to higher inland areas in spring?

(A load???? Is there a collective noun for curlews? And what about lapwings... they are my favourite to see en masse)

Yes Grimma they do I believe. I was surprised when out walking near Beaumaris last New Year's Day to see about 40 curlews in a field. I think they come back to the moors to breed.

Off to look up what a bunch of curlews is......

Oh - it is a herd of curlews. Very dull.

We've got warm coast and moors in Lancashire!

I will persist in saying flock. I like flock better.

Perhaps - in view of your liking for their call - it should be a heard of curlews?

Oh tres drole!

That evocative bubbling call gets me every time.

Oh...talking about hearing... I didn't see it but I'm sure I heard an eider drake frankie-howerding just off the coast at Lytham last week. Is there anything it could possibly have been that sounds like that?

Hmm, well it can't have been Frankie Howerd I suppose

I'm puzzled, though. Was it saying "Titter ye not"?

Google and find the sound of an eider drake somewhere, if you've never heard one (we hear lots at the local WWT). Its a ooooweeerr! sort of noise.

Oh, I see. Poor eider drakes, not the effect they were hoping for I'm sure.

Butterflies! Two flittering in the garden. Brown & orange seen clearly cos they took a breather on the wall.

Can I have my points reinstated for having a dodgy back which has confined me to the garden? I have seen a robin and a frog (it was in a pink picnic bowl though, eh? eh?)

No special points for spotters-in-pain.
[rolls eye]

If one thing this thread has taught me is I need to get a good bird spotting book.
And maybe a shark spotting book.

Proper lol @ eiders going 'titter ye not'

Just back from ride out on daft horse and would like to enter the following ;

• 4 herons along by the stream
• 2 woodpeckers in the forest

and

• 6 sky larks up on the plateau

There was also loads of evidence of wild boar (dug up fields) but I didn't see any although daft horse was convinced there was something truly dangerous in a pile of twigs. True there were rustling noises but I incline more towards a blackbird.

BTW who is the judge of our top trump?

I dreamt about wild boar and warthogs last night. Does that count?

Depends what they were doing.

If they were dressed in sparkly red jackets doing a song and dance routine probably not.

Just grubbing around

I sympathise with daft horse. Blackbirds in woodland debris rustle way above their weight. I suspect that large boots are worn.

Soon, btw, we will have the spectacle of feuding pairs of blackbird males chasing each other round the garden to the point of exhaustion, and forgetting to fly away from toothsome Parson Russell Terriers. Feuding springtime sparrows at least have the sense to feud in flight instead of hopping, but still my dog has twice snatched them out of the sky. There is a loss of perspective among wildlife at this time of year.

"A shag/fight or my continued existence?" muses the natural world, philosophically. Much like me and the eternal shag/fight versus tea and cake and a nice sit down dilemma.

Today, my first bumblebee of the year (buzzing round patio pots, I didn't even need to go outside for it).