The Safari is getting a bit peed off with the weather. Driving rain with the wind from a duff direction yet again for a not-so-refreshing change. How are we going to get out and find all those east coast goodies that have filtered across to this side?
Patch 1 was a dark and wet affair with nothing much happening at all. No Peregrines, not that we’re going to tell the pigeon fondlers were they are anyway, but they could have been roosting round the back out of sight given the wind direction.
The recent plethora of Robins has dwindled to hardly any, either that or they all gone very quite or they’re still fast-a-kimbo at that ungodly hour. It was unfeasibly quiet on the Patch save for the drip drip drip of rain on the leaves above our head.
Any thoughts of a safari to Patch 2 were quashed as we didn’t fancy sitting at our desk sopping wet for the rest of the morning. The brisk south-easterly probably wouldn’t have produced much at sea and in those conditions vis-mig would have been a non-starter. Bet you a pound to a penny the overnight rain dropped a Whinchat into the bushes along side the tram tracks just waiting for us to pass by – no such luck!
At lunchtime it took almost 0.3245 of a nanosecond – yes as long as that! - to decide not to venture out on safari…well you’d have to be stark raving to go out in that…it was horizontal stair-rods! Far better to stay indoors with a warming mug of tea…d’yer know we might just break with tradition and have a coffee for a change – Fair-trade of course as it was, until recently at least, traditional to treat those 3rd world farmers more or less as slaves!
Sitting here looking out of the window on a ‘normal’ October day after an almost perfectly average summer for Blackpool it’s easy to forget that climate change is still happening. Don’t believe us – have a look for the cool blue on the pic below.
Patch 1 was a dark and wet affair with nothing much happening at all. No Peregrines, not that we’re going to tell the pigeon fondlers were they are anyway, but they could have been roosting round the back out of sight given the wind direction.
The recent plethora of Robins has dwindled to hardly any, either that or they all gone very quite or they’re still fast-a-kimbo at that ungodly hour. It was unfeasibly quiet on the Patch save for the drip drip drip of rain on the leaves above our head.
Any thoughts of a safari to Patch 2 were quashed as we didn’t fancy sitting at our desk sopping wet for the rest of the morning. The brisk south-easterly probably wouldn’t have produced much at sea and in those conditions vis-mig would have been a non-starter. Bet you a pound to a penny the overnight rain dropped a Whinchat into the bushes along side the tram tracks just waiting for us to pass by – no such luck!
At lunchtime it took almost 0.3245 of a nanosecond – yes as long as that! - to decide not to venture out on safari…well you’d have to be stark raving to go out in that…it was horizontal stair-rods! Far better to stay indoors with a warming mug of tea…d’yer know we might just break with tradition and have a coffee for a change – Fair-trade of course as it was, until recently at least, traditional to treat those 3rd world farmers more or less as slaves!
Sitting here looking out of the window on a ‘normal’ October day after an almost perfectly average summer for Blackpool it’s easy to forget that climate change is still happening. Don’t believe us – have a look for the cool blue on the pic below.
Not long to go now and we’ll be able to compare 1981 – 2010 with 1961 – 1990 and 1971 – 2000. The chart below shows Blackpool’s night-time temperature over the last decade is significantly higher than the previous two decades. Daytime temperatures are only higher in the spring and early summer the rest of the year being spot on ‘average’. 
Wonder what the same chart for 2011 – 2020 will look like, we’ll be starting the data collection for it in 92 days time.
Enough doom and gloom…
Where to next? A pre-dawn start on a Frank-less safari way up north in the morning with three target species (two would do).
In the meantime let us know if your outback is under a blue dot or a red dot.
3 comments:
Much the same on my patch as yours Dave. I am stark raving mental - but I still didn't go out :-)
Our weather has been downright bizarre all year. September brought us nothing but fog and rain it seemed til the very end. October has now dawned with sunshine and warm tempartures, a late and unexpected Indian summer. Most of the powers that be claim La Nina is the reason for current weather patterns rather than global climate change, but whatever the reason they say we are in store for a cold, wet winter. I hope you get some sunshine again soon!
So where have the Robins gone then Dave?
I thought that now our garden robin had turned up it would be with us until early spring, but, like your plethora of them, our one seems to have cleared off too. Are they early autumn migrants that have moved further south and more will follow to take up winter residence in our gardens??
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