Winding down

The return to blighty is looming, just time for a few waders and the like,...

Short-billed Dowitcher

American Golden Plover

Pied-billed Grebe on Sao Miguel today and seven Nearctic wader species on Terceira. 

Azores mega!

Sao Miguel University, above the compact leafy campus a White-tailed Tropicbird arcs through the sub-tropical azure, part seabird, part revelation, translucent wings and tail ablaze, streamer a rippling trace of its angelic passage. Image of the trip. Seared on the retina, too sublime to confine to sensor or film,... or, perhaps, I'd left the camera in the motor.

In lieu of tropicbird feast your eyes on this beauty found knocking about with House Sparrows NW of Relva,...

OOOOOSH! Azores mega!

Terra firma is but a myth

Over it, on it, in it. Still out here,... still looking. 

Catching pennies,... again

Pissed about at Ribeira Grande getting the longipes Oystercatcher and taking in some of the warm-up for the EUROSURF 13 quarter-finals. Of course, we should have been bagging a White-tailed Tropicbird but the news dissemination was 'gerbled'.  Did get Skylark on Santa Maria this afternoon though,... pennies and pounds and all that.

One good tern, yadda yadda yadda

Had a couple of Sooty Terns today, it would appear Graciosa can still claim to host a breeding population. The seas have got up a bit though making waving a camera around a touch tricky, so here's an image from yesterday,...

Great Shearwater in the gloaming,... cadillac of the sky.

Booby

Brown Booby,... he said booby.

Swinhoes, etc.

A tiny picture of a very nice bird.

Fea's (probable Desertas) Petrel

Monteiro's Storm-petrel, not that you can tell from this angle

Kuchen und überkuchen

"And, lo, the angel of the Baker came upon them, and the glory of the Baker shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is baked this day a Saviour, which is Loaf of Banana."

Whenever I make a cake I like to extract it from the oven to the rumbling double low C of the opening sequence of Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra before, oven-gloved, cake tin held aloft, parading around the kitchen, lounge and hallway with the brass fanfare and dawn motif of the Einleitung, oder Sonnenaufgang announcing the arrival of yet another culinary masterpiece. I do this because it is 'the right thing to do' and is in no way 'over the top'. 

Ickle bees

Are Lasioglossum bees identifiable in the field or from photographs? Or are they widdy little entomological enigmas wrapped in a mini-beast mystery?

Mean moffs

A still taken during rehearsals for my ground-breaking stage production of Mean Streets.  All the parts are to be played by micro moths and, instead of Little Italy, the drama unfolds against a gritty backdrop of a post-apocalyptic dystopia where every small time hood struggles to succeed amongst a decaying architecture of discarded technology.  In this pivotal scene Charlie (played by Caloptilia [or should it be Gracillaria?] syringella) approaches the alter of the fallen Apple and delivers his personal philosophy on confession, sin and penance:

"... It's all bullshit except the pain, right? The pain of hell. The burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite. You don't fuck around with the infinite. There's no way you do that..."

I think we all know this is going to be great.  The only problem I foresee is choosing between the West End or Broadway,... well that and the fact that the cast are tiny, virtually uncontrollable invertebrates, most of whom I struggle to tell apart.

But apart from that,... this is going to be great.