Typical Brits

Legend has it that us Brits do nothing but talk about the weather. Combine our innate obsession with cloud watching with the delicate nature ofgetting the conditions just right for ringing, and you've got an observatory full of people continually checking every weather forecast available to see what the next days will hold. No amount of checking could change the inevitable though and as predicted, Monday was a shocker. Howling winds and driving rain for the whole day meant a day with no ringing at all.

That left James and I to go out to World’s End to see if watching the sea might throw up any unusual birds in the difficult conditions. We only stayed out for a couple of hours and there were lots of flocks of scoter on the move but not much else to report. Watching the large flocks was useful though, as we need to gather some data to use when we start looking at the station’s radar data in relation to migration.Eventually the rain drove us back indoors to dry off and drink tea (another thing we Brits are notorious for) and we spent the rest of the morning doing admin and cleaning jobs. James and I made a short film to capture the highlights of European Birdwatch Day which can be seen here on Facebook.

A bit of cleaning and tidying around the station and the ringing lab and then before cabin fever set in, we set off on bikes and rode through the rain to get to Skagen for coffee and cake!

The weather may have tried to stop our ringing today but it wasn’t going to stand in the way of a visit to the bakery ;)