Mothers day list

 With the clock change we decided to head out for the day and have a listing day to see if we could find any spring migrants.

 On the way to Melby we spotted Curlew, Wren, Hooded Crow, Skylark, Rock Dove, Starling, Greylag, Goldeneye, Teal, Redshank and Common Gull. 

There was a lovely Great Northern Diver off the beach.

There were lots of purple sandpipers and Turnstones.

There were also Ringed Plovers and Redshanks on the beach.

Gannets were passing through and Fulmar, Herring Gull, Black Headed Gull and Shag also made an appearance.

Next we drove to Norby where we had lots of twite,

Moorhen, House Sparrows,  Oystercatchers,

Meadow Pipits, Lapwing, Cormorant, Long Tailed Duck and a Linnet.

While driving we had a Raven and lots of Hares.

Bridge of Walls offered 3 Mute Swans for the day but no Heron today.

Down in the South we saw Red throated Diver, Dunlin, Blackbird, Merganser and more Long tailed ducks 

Around 10 pairs of shelduck, and a distant pintail.

Wigeon, American Wigeon on Hillwell with the long staying and still distant Bufflehead, Coot, Mallard, Shoveler,Tufted Duck and Black Backed Gull.

Rob got his first White fronted Goose on Shetland.

The main migrants we found were two Chiff chaffs at Quendale Mill and a lovely  Northern Wheatear.

We stopped for lunch and heard a Collared Dove and a pheasant ran across a field as we went by.

Plenty of Eider at various locations.

On the way home we had Tystie, Robin  pied Wagtail,Whooper Swan, Rook, Med Gull and Lesser Black Backed Gull.

It was a lovely day

We think we have missed one. The list ended on 59.

Ah found it. Meadow Pipit at Norby!

Mud

 Not much to blog about this week as Jim is still recovering and the weather hasn't been great for being outside.

Friday we had our appointment with planning, our lovely MP and the CEO of the organisation of the Grant scheme trying to sort out the solar panels we have been fighting for, for 2 years.

 It was an interesting meeting with a very stubborn organisation that don't like to change from their hymn sheet. They say putting them on the ground( which both planning and us want for maintenance and appearance reasons) is too expensive. We can't convince them that the cost of scaffold hire far exceeds a small amount of groundworks! They now want to send an architect, for planning application, and surveyor out which will probably cost a further £10000.  Rob has got fed up and put planning in already for free as we already have all the drawings and information we need and it's free if it is something for your disability.  Sigh. They are already paying massively over the odds for the company up here to put the panels in.

We do hate stupid!

Anyway. Today started lovely so Jill was outside working on the mud patch in front of the extension trying to work out how to shutter up for the new path and drainage.

Also managed to get the car cleaned inside. Long overdue!

Post box is up the top. Annoyingly it leaks a bit but Jill is working on it. Also did some repairs to the chicken fencing that took a bashing in the wind.

Got it!

 We had a meeting in town today so decided to have a quick check for the Med Gull. Seems funny getting excited as we used to see them regularly in Norfolk! It showed much better today and the Iceland Gull appeared again too.

Jill spent some time today shunting the post box up the garden. It's good and heavy so hopefully will stay put!

Also pen and paper came out to work out the layout of the new front path to allow for plenty of drainage.

Going to have a go at building the shutters for it tomorrow.

Paperwork.

 You have to do it sometimes. Most of Sunday  was in the office. Jill deleting files which is really boring and Rob working on stuff for our meeting with the MP , planning and the Grant people to sort out the mess that is our grant offer i.e for 2 years nothing is happening except empty promises. We are very grateful we have such a good MP. It's a novelty! Rob is also working on getting the house de-listed as the listing is unsustainable and totally inaccurate. This will help in the future, we don't intend to do anything but look after it properly but the listing  makes that impossible and has cost us lots of time and money.

 To cheer ourselves up a bit we popped to Lerwick for the Med Gull. We did see it but only distantly. We did spot a nice Iceland Gull though.

There were some other gulls around too.

We got a few other bits and bobs on the way home too.