Christmas Adventures 2009

Aberystwyth NightLight Video

Introducing Jerry

Welcome to my first guest bloggers of the week! I would like to introduce my good friend Jerry (from jerryhcooke fame), and his girlfriend Fawn.

Jerry is one of the reasons that all of you have to put up with me happy snapping almost everything. We went through school together and I spent many happy hours stealing his camera equipment and going and taking photos of nature, before actually deciding to buy my own. Pretty much all the equipment I have bought has been vetted by Jerry first!

Anyway, Jerry is a vlogger rather than a blogger and has a great youtube channel here. He also took some AMAZING pictures of our wedding which you can view on his flickr page here.

He lives in St Ives, which is probably in one of the most beautiful places on earth (although don’t let Josh hear me say Cornwall is beautiful!).

Enough of my waffling…enjoy!

Exciting News!

Ah! Doesn’t that just lift your spirits?!

Scotland is one of my favourite places on Earth. It’s so beautiful and wild and it makes me very happy indeed.

Luckily for me, as you read this, I am in Scotland on holiday with Josh and four of our good friends.

However, the holiday fun doesn’t end with us. I am extending some blogging holiday joy here at dreaming of the country to YOU, my dear readers.

I am excited to announce that this week DoTC will be taken over by not one, not three, not five, but four special guests who will be taking it in turns to entertain you with their wit and talent.

If you peruse my blogroll regularly these people will be familiar faces, if not this is a great opportunity to meet some of my favourite blogging friends.

So sit back, grab some haggis and enjoy.

Yeah, ‘cos we would make great farmers

Escaping the office

Yesterday was my day off, and for the first time since our Christmas break I was able to escape my office and enjoy the beautiful, cold crisp weather we’ve been having.

 

However first of all I had to endure a trip to the optician. Why is it that the optician always feels much more like an exam than either the doctors or the dentist? I just feel like an idiot because I can’t see half the letters, but perhaps that’s just because I’m a perfectionist!

Anyway, I managed to escape from there after about an hour and a half with a new pair of specs and a new pair of sunglasses on order which totally blew our budget out of the water for this month L. I nearly screamed in the middle of the shop when the woman told me my lenses weren’t suitable for the frames I’d just spent 30 minutes choosing from a whole load I hated anyway. I ended up with kids frames because my face is too small!! My wedding ring is kids size too – shame it doesn’t make it any cheaper!!

 

So after all this kerfuffle we finally managed to get out into the countryside which put me in a much better mood. Everything was frozen and beautiful.

You can’t see awfully well on this video but the banks and part of the river were all frozen solid. (Note: Sorry if you get sea sick while viewing that video – I don’t have the steadiest of camera hands!)

 

 

 

We saw Snipe and Woodcock, both life ticks (first time I’ve seen one) so that was exciting, as well as some lovely bullfinches, redwing, White fronted geese and the other regulars.

I’m not the biggest fan of proper ‘twitching’ as it involves far too much standing around looking at little brown birds that I can never find in my binoculars anyway. I tend to take a more active approach (which normally involves embarrassing Josh), like making goat noises to attract Snipe or dancing around like a Morris dancer to attract Night Jars (before you laugh this does actually work very well – they are very curious and the males think the hankies are the wingtips of a rival bird).

Try it, even if it doesn’t work the look on the other birdwatchers’ faces is priceless