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Dibs. Message sent.

It’s a serious decline. I actually saw my largest flock of the year yesterday, all juveniles, maybe 50 or so. Not that long ago there was a massive colony nesting all over a housing estate near me, but they were possibly the only happy residents so the area has been redeveloped over a few years, and they’ve all gone.

Now that’s what I call quite good!

Definitely sand martins.

I just bought myself a Husky Svartpilen 701. I wanted something a bit more agile than my BMW for pottering about on but it’s actually a lot of fun on longer rides.
The BMW is currently languishing in a workshop with a misfire that has eluded diagnosis for a week. When it comes back I might get rid of it, it might have 100 horsepower more than the Husky but it doesn’t get me anywhere more quickly. It’s only better on motorways and I tend to avoid them where I can.

River Derwent at Froggat bridge,
Rivelin Valley

Damflask Reservoir
Redmires reservoir
Middle peak quarry is amazing but you have to sneak in.

There are many other differences to tell the two birds apart. The one thing you mentioned is something that is the same (or similar) on both. The pale supercilium (which is what I think you mean by little dart of pale colour) is one way of telling its a Sparrowhawk, as is the overall brown colour, Peregrines are dark grey and white with a pale face but a black cap and a black teardrop extending over the cheeks). The length of the tail and the barring on it, the warm tones of the breast and thigh feathers, (peregrines are very cold toned) and the fact that it’s eating the prey on the ground are also indicative. Sparrowhawk almost always eat like that, and can be approached quite close. Peregrines may kill their prey on the ground after striking it in flight but unless it is too big they’ll carry it off to a high perch to pluck and eat it. I’ve seen peregrines take Shelducks and eat them, but on salt marshes where they won’t get disturbed easily. Mostly they strike birds smaller than themselves and fly directly to a pylon or rooftop with it.

I agree. It’s a female Sparrowhawk. But it’s isn’t the yellow eye that tells me that as both Sparrowhawks and Peregrines have yellow around the eyes when adult.
Also I’d like to mention that Buzzards are actually quite effective predators. I’ve seen them take young Rabbits, Grass snakes, Voles and once even a singing Skylark, caught in flight.

Many years ago I had a bit of cash to by new binoculars. I went into a shop and looked through lots of pairs and asked to try the then newly released Leica Ultravid. I was astonished at the difference. I simply couldn’t waste money on inferior binoculars having tried them. So eventually I bought a pair and have had them ever since.
A while back I bought an even better pair, the Leica Noctivid, but they were outrageously expensive and I ended up selling them and getting my by now extremely battered Ultravids refurbished. It cost me £500 for a full rebuild but they used the latest glass, which is a considerable upgrade. Given that it’s my most used possession it’s been good value.

Here you go

A bit late to reply but look for Pentax Papillo 6.5 x 21.

https://www.aceoptics.co.uk/pentax-papilio-ii-6-5x21.html
I’ve seen them for just over £100. I have a couple of pairs I use with youngsters and they’re amazing value.
The real bonus is their extraordinary close focus. About 18”.
The only drawback is a rather narrow field of view, but that’s only really noticeable if you’ve had the luxury of the wide field of high end binoculars.

We had a problem at my little community centre, which has four parking spaces, with a white Audi convertible that regularly parked across two of them in the evening. Last winter when we had a very cold snap I poured a cupful of water over the screen every 20 minutes building up a 15mm thick layer of ice.
She hasn’t parked there since.

I’ve just watched the last 15 kms of the stage and the number of unmarshalled junctions, parked cars and cones in the road was astonishing, let alone the dodgy last 2 kms of road. What a shambles.

Elephant Hawk moth on the path this morning. I moved somewhere safer as it was likely to get trodden on or ridden over.

That’s bloody marvellous. Right in the Carradice / CTC / Audax ethos.
Was there a reason to do it though? Other than to prove you could?

Having breakfast served in my garden next to one of the ponds.

Was it oil, or an oil like substance? A lot of environmental activists use food dye water and gum. Looks like crude oil but washes away. Very easy to pump too, so I’m told.
The only statements that I’ve seen about what it was have come from the police and media, so I’d treat it with circumspection.

Snap. This pair landed on my hand this morning!

Absolute scenes:

I have a shed full of the things. You can have a reasonable pair for the cost of posting. They’ll be a bit rusty from lack of use but they’re perfectly serviceable.

Over what period does the recovery take? It doesn’t say. And if the conditions for regrowth aren’t optimal ( e.g. continuing drought) that figure could be a lot less.

This is one of the downfalls of “nature based” projects for carbon sequestration. As the climate changes a lot of areas become drier and or fire prone, so wetlands dry up releasing carbon dioxide as they do so, and woodlands and forests catch fire, with the same but more obvious results.
There is yet no sure way of locking up carbon, the only real solution appears to be a rapid transition away from burning fossil fuels, and of course we’re simply not going to be able to do that.
Even if we stopped right now the legacy of all the carbon already released will affect us for many years.
Despite all the climate related disasters we’re currently witnessing that appear to be attributed to climate change, we aren’t at 1.5 degrees above pre industrial levels. We’re heading for 3 degrees according to the consensus among the scientific community looking at such things.

We currently produce 30 billion tonnes of CO2 a year. (And have been at that level for years!)
In order to capture enough carbon to reduce the amount in the atmosphere to safe levels we need to remove all that CO2 and a significant proportion or what’s been pumped in before. Let’s say 25 years worth, or 750 billion tonnes. Factor in what we’re going to produce in the next 25 years and that could be the same again, so a potential total of 1500 billion tonnes.
The biggest CO2 capture facility currently in existence captures about 4,000 tonnes per year. So industrial scale CO2 capture is a pipe dream. We won’t have any facility running at the appropriate scale for decades, if ever, because we can’t hide that much carbon easily.

Every day is a school day. I read a bit more on the subject and found this.
https://circuit.bcit.ca/repository/islandora/object/repository%3A2043/datastream/PDF/download/citation.pdf

Oh I fully agree that structural racism is a big issue that needs to be tackled with a lot more energy than currently.
But facial recognition technology is not that good at identifying one of the main groups of people the police like to pick on has a sweet irony to it.