Spring is here

I often joke that there are only 2 seasons in my year. Summer for trad-climbing and winter for winter-climbing. These seasons are not fixed and can overlap, especially during what is normally referred to a spring and autumn where I might be climbing on sunkissed rock one weekend and plodding through the snow on another.

Of course there aren’t only 2 seasons in the year and this is a pretty narrow minded point of view. Spring and autumn are awesome and clearly (by me at least) underrated. It’s spring I’ll write about today. First my mushrooms have finally grown. Rachel pointed out that spending £5 on a mushroom growing kit from B&Q makes it a pretty expensive harvest, but I don’t care as it’s finally produced a single mushroom. Mushrooms are not the only thing in our flat. We’ve got our little greenhouse up and running and have little plants sprouting up all over the place. We’ve tried to be a little more greener and installed a new set of storage things for the recycling. This is a great idea and it would be made all the better if the council actually collected the recycling for our flat.

 

Finally what has made this spring really cool has been all the birds I’ve seen when I’ve been out climbing, and at home. Up and down the coast over the past few weekends I’ve seen seabirds flying backwards and forwards. I’ve been screamed at by large blacktip gulls who have been defending their nests at Crag X and we’ve sat on the cliff and watched the oystercatchers defending their island. There is a cormorant at crag x that keeps us company, and carries off massive fish every so often.

On the last visit that was bird I didn’t recognise and I’ve spent the last week trying to work out. It was a Wheatear and it took almost 2 days for me to get a reasonable decent shot of it with my camera. It was nice to see something new.

I did mention at home to. We’ll not quite at home, but at my parents there is blue tit which had taken advantage of an old nest box that my Dad has uprooted and just left lying against the fence. I think there are 7 chicks in total. I’ll be keeping an eye on them over the coming weeks to see how they develop.

 

Quickly a final note, at Castle Naze this weekend I finally found a Dung Beetle! (here) the wiki page isn't very helpful but these guys do turn up all over the place, so keep a look out for them!