To my shame

 Being fortunate to live in a wonderful neighbourhood, in the quiet backwater of Dumpton, which is part of Ramsgate on the Isle of Thanet, I am truly grateful. The sea is just over a mile away, as the crow flies, and should I wish to embark upon a low carbon birding project places like North Foreland/Foreness Point, Ramsgate Harbour, Pegwell Bay, Reculver Marshes and the superb Stodmarsh/Grove Ferry NNR are all within an hour's walking/cycling distance. I'm living the dream compared to those, far less fortunate folk, who find themselves in land-locked towns and cities of the Shires and Midlands, for instance. Now, two General Elections ago, I am ashamed to admit that on that fateful date I placed my "X" beside the UKIP candidate - one Nigel Farage. It seemed like the best option at that time - what a major error of judgement on my part. A few years back, Bev and I had a massive redevelopment of our bungalow, using a builder called Kevin Andrews and his team. They're from Margate and came highly recommended by neighbours who'd also had some work done by these guys. 

The Margate Lifeboat in action off of North Foreland
I nicked the image from Google - do hope no-one gets upset?

Kevin said six weeks, but planning regulations and umpteen other unseen issues meant it was closer to nine months from start to finish so, unsurprisingly, we became quite friendly. Turned out that Kevin and his mate Andy were members of the Margate RNLI Lifeboat crew. Kevin was actually the coxswain, and several times during the building project they had to down tools in order to attend some maritime incident off of our coastline. These guys are volunteers, putting their own lives at risk in order to assist others. When I saw, and listened to, what Farage had to say about these brave individuals acting as a "taxi service" for illegal migrants I was speechless. This racist bigot had conned me into voting for him, riding high on the failure of Theresa May and, clown prince, Corbyn to convince the electorate that they were worthy of support. I cringe at the bile that comes out of his mouth - he has no grasp of what we, as "British Citizens" hold dear. He appeals to the low life, far right, extreme of a culture which thrives on diversity and prides itself on being a fair and open democracy. Or at least we used to?

Sorry for this heavy shit, I seem to be on a bit of a moaning mission at present. Out in the garden, again, early this morning in order to save the hanging baskets from a battering by "Storm Evert". I haven't spent all summer nurturing these plants to have them destroyed by a summer storm. Once I'd done the necessary, I grabbed the bins and scanned the skies for swifts. I don't think there will be many more sightings in 2021 from the garden, so was pleased to record eight in little more than an hour. What put the cherry on the cake was the sighting of a lone House Martin battling south, into the increasing wind, thus adding another species to the BWKm0 2021 list

No. 64 - House Martin

I was really pleased with this sighting because, on Tuesday, I'm sure I completely screwed up when another single hirundine passed over the garden but I just couldn't clinch the id despite my "gut feeling" Hopefully, some time in the not to distant future, I'll get down off of my soap box and revert to posts about not catching fish from the East Kent marshes?