"Odds & Sods" (old version) - please add to the new thread 2020 instead !

As you asked so nicely...one of my favourite shots, a Beardie at Radipole from Feb

Wow PB, 2 Otters.... I hadn't realised there were otters that close to Poole, I tend to stomp around Upton Park or Arne when I am over so now need to keep an eye out for Otties as well :).

Your stripy 8 leg is an Argiope bruennichi otherwise known as a Wasp spider.

CinJ

Thanks Cin, they are in the Stour at Blandford, if you know the area?

And thanks for spider ID 

Some excellent stuff and I grudgingly admit that you probably deserve to get two otters for getting up that early!!

PimperneBloke said:

04:30....yes Hazel, there are 2 of them in a day!!

I'm not convinced. I think it is just a figment of imagination of those suffering from severe sleep deprivation.

PimperneBloke said:

A warbler sang beautifully in my ear

You'll get used to the arguments discussions of Willow Warbler vs Chiffchaff on here, but that might be a telling description. Not many warblers are singing at the moment, but if it was singing beautifully, then it was almost certainly a Willow Warbler. Chiffchaffs have a repetitive call that while it might be distinctive or even evocative, I think few would actually describe it as singing beautifully Listen to a recording of the Chiffchaffs call/song and you'll easily recognise if that was your bird, anyway.

The Chiffchaffs we heard in the last week at Rutland Water could only manage a single chirp with a gap and then another chirp, a gap and another, etc., hardly a song and nothing like their seeming more vigorous double 'Help! Help!' call from earlier in the season. This was more like a feeble and softer 'help...........help............help', half a dozen or more spread out chirps, being too weak from the exhaustion of raising the kids to be able to repeat it each time--lol!

Nice early morning scenery PB, I would have been content just to see the birdlife you saw but to see not one but two Otters just puts the icing on the cake. I also am not going to mention the Beardie!!!!!

Juvenile male (I think)

Fantastic photo Alan - quite unique !

Well you've probably heard of the term "Manky Mallard"  but have you heard of a "Ganky Goose"  ?    I hadn't until today !       however,  I prefer to call these types of birds with colour variation or altered pigmentation as in this Greylag case Leucistic !       No bird really deserves the term manky (or ganky) as in no way are they inferior, mucky or grubby as the unfair use of the word manky suggests,  although the word seems to be originally derived from the meaning  "lacking"  which would be more apt. 

It was keeping in close company with two Canada Geese