Christine's walking & birds blog

It's difficult to believe that four days ago I was standing on the dusty quarry road watching a couple of narrow-bordered bee hawk-moths patrolling a bank of birdsfoot trefoil in warm sunshine.

Today it's grey and cold, and yesterday - when I went on probably my worst pelagic yet - wasn't much better. I did get a new bird for the year when a couple of fulmars went planing past, and I saw a large splash far behind when someone alerted me to the presence of a whale. But there was no nice man waiting on West Shore Street to give me a lift home, and I had to trudge up the hill and through the village in the rain. Greger's gone south to pick up his new passport from the Swedish embassy in London, and, on the way back, to call in at the Everything Electric (formerly Fully Charged) exhibition in Harrogate to find out even more about batteries (the man's battery-mad). This battery would be for storing power from solar panels, which he intends to have fitted to the roof of the bungalow later this year.