Autumn

 Some, much needed, rain fell overnight and continued, on and off, right through to mid-day. Absolutely nothing to moan about as Thanet needs plenty of rainfall to get the local countryside back into some form of normality. Our lawn has regained much of it's colour, although still a little patchy, but the situation is certainly on the up! The moth trap continues to provide evidence of the amazing diversity of creatures visiting our garden. Green-brindled Crescent and Dusky-lemon Sallow were the latest additions to the 2022 list as I checked the egg trays today.

As I didn't have to collect Harry from school today I, instead, took an afternoon stroll around Pegwell Bay NNR. It was all rather spontaneous, so just the camera and binoculars for luggage. I spent a superb couple of hours down at the site without seeing anything particularly unusual. Not that it matters? To have this facility right on my doorstep is a privilege which I'd be insane to ignore whilst the angling situation remains so poor. Things will change, of that there can be no doubt, but local birding will do very nicely whilst awaiting conditions to dictate otherwise. 

In all honesty, modern birding seems a little weird. Fellow bloggers are, far more eloquently than I could ever hope to do, discussing the "twitching" community and "organised flushing" whilst I've discovered a scene where cameras replace binoculars and scopes. Times they are a changing? I have opinions about both of these situations yet know that if I was still involved in "Kent Listing" I'd be just as OTT as those folk are today. I think that " Don't throw stones if you live in glass houses"  fits quite nicely under the circumstances. 

This Kestrel was perched up beside the coastal footpath which follows the seawall around Pegwell Bay. As I was pointing the long lense a young couple, with pushchair and dog, walked behind me and flushed the bird. Part and parcel of everyday life. That they did so within the boundaries of a National Nature Reserve should obviously constitute deliberate disturbance - thus a criminal offence? Get real. It happens all the time and is no more deliberate than your shadow causing a butterfly to take to the wing.

It is so easy to find fault with others, because it means you don't have to look at your own actions. As it says within the hallo'ed pages of The God Squad's fairy tale - "Let him without sin cast the first stone!" Wise words indeed.