Busy, yet lazy

It's been quite a busy easter weekend, but it feels like we've also been exceeedingly lazy. Time off from the usual routines to go away on holiday is a truly beneficial thing. It helps in a whole host of ways beyond the obvious social/mental/familial things and this is something I deal with at work on a daily basis and I'm very fortunate in that I'm able to get away for breaks very regularly. However, having time off from work and using it just to stay at home and do nothing is something I've never really considered before. This weekend, it feels as though we've done just that, and it's been excellent.

Friday was spent being slow and particularly hungover. We'd planned initially to go to Minsmere but in light of the previous night's drinking found ourselves instead lurking around Orsett and Grays. Most of the day was spent with the Girl's family, sitting out on the meadow having one of those long slow outdoors type meals. Brief birdy highlight was an adult mediterranean gull circling low over Danehalls roundabout in Grays.

Orsett is nice.

On Saturday we planned again to go to Minsmere but considering that the band had a gig in the evening opted to stay (relatively) local and went up to Fingringhoe instead. I've only been to Fingringhoe once, many years ago, and don't really remember much more than seeing my first turtle dove, so it was pretty well all new to us. We had it almost to ourselves as most people seemed to get lost and were unable to find half the trails...

Arriving reasonably early in the morning with the perfect weather paid off as the birds were all in full song. We counted well over 20 singing nightingales and a full set of warblers. We also found two adders - full points to the Girl for not screaming and running away like I expected her to. One of the nightingales was fairly showy, flying to and fro across a path, favouring one particularly open bush. We were eventually able to get decent views as it sang and this masterpiece of a photo.


No such luck with the garden warblers, of which there were at least four singing. We stood less than a metre from one bush as it sang from inside and despite having watched it go in were unable to see it at all. There were still decent numbers of waders on the creek, with over 200 bar-tailed godwits present, and we found hundreds of sand-martins at a nearby gravel extraction site.


A quick look at Abberton on the way back gave us common and black terns, another five or six nightingales and a yellow wagtail.

In the evening we played at the Optimist in Upminster/Hornchurch for their St George's Day celebrations. It was very much an unknown quantity, with the pub not ever having bands on and us not knowing what kind of crowd we'd be playing to. In the end it was awesome and exactly the kind of show that I wanted to play when we first started - a great atmosphere, pub packed out with people who actually seemed to enjoy everything we played, and us all playing on top form. An excellent night out, though we had ringing ears in the morning and I'm still nursing the guitar-related blisters now.

Today I was perfectly happy to catch up on sleep until half ten, eat some bacon, then return to bed until midday before heading straight to the pub to meet/eat/drink through the afternoon. There's another whole day tomorrow...