5 August 2010

CRANE in Notts!!!

Last night I received a phonecall from fellow Notts birder Alan Clewes informing me that a pal of his had just found a Crane at Hoveringham! This was at c8.40pm! I had time to bomb there before dark, no problem.....except that I appeared to have lost 2/3 of a bottle of the old 'Rouge Juice' and thus was a tad over the limit to be careering along the country lanes of Thurgaton at pace! So the alarm was set, the remainder of the bottle gulped.......and then decided to start on some White & stay up til 12.45am like a c*nt! Anyhow, 4am, the alarm goes off, I stagger, still pissed, into the kitchen, black coffee swamped and out into the humid early morning air! Surprisingly, by the time I reached Kirkby-in-Ashfield to collect The Marquis, I had was relatively sober and with the target in mind we headed to The Trent!



We arrived at Hoveringham at 5.10am and immediately I received a text from Mark Dawson that the bird was still present! After a bit of confusion regarding which way to walk (east path or west path, NOT forwards or backwards!) we were soon staring down our scopes at a cool Crane (255) and cheesily grinning like two schoolboys who had just found a porno mag on the park! The fact that it was a year-tick to me was massively overpowered by the better fact that it was a much longed for, over-due County Tick! Having had our fill we decided to do one and has we headed back to the car, the Crane wished us farewell as it too flew off SW calling! (see further down for a pretty shoddy bit of video footage...in fact, don't bother!)





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