Christmas - Not seeing owls (again) - Treerats - Swanage (again)

The Girl and I have stuck to the faintly ridiculous tradition of bringing a tree into the house and vomitting tacky shiny things upon it in order to celebrate that time ages ago, when an ambitious baby that went on to piss off a lot of Jews was born in a stable. Presumably because the parents decided this was safer than the maternity unit at Queens. I think. The tree symbolises... well, I'm not entirely sure what it all means, but tonight we're celebrating it anyway. Hooray! We're opening the sloe gin, turning on some little LED lights (apparently they flash) and sending out lots of cards with cutesey pictures of polar bears and penguins being festive. It's official - Christmas is happening and I'm oddly excited. I'm sure that baby would be happy.

I went looking for the regular little owls at a site just outside Orsett today but they weren't there, probably because I took the camera with me. Decent numbers of the usual Orsett-in-winter stuff though; woodpeckers, finches, winter thrushes, and parakeets. 

Parakeets. This isn't some park in West London - Orsett Fen is decidedly east and decidedly rural - and the parakeets, despite spreading fast in the area and now being resident at this site at almost any time of day or year, are still a bit of a novelty. They're just a novelty that has more than worn off. I don't like them. I mean, sure, they're almost good looking things, but they're noisy, vulgar, and definitely not British. They just don't fit. Can anyone spell "eradication"? Hmm. This is all starting to sound a little bit like an avian BNP/EDL...This one, a particularly noisy bugger, was busy prospecting breeding sites.

Psittaciformes out! British nest holes for British birds!

Sticking with the failing to see owls theme, we went looking for the shorties at Rainham at dusk. Nothing doing, but we did take pictures of the moon that make it look like the sun. Ish. I think I need to experiment more to get decent moon pictures, and possibly a filtery thing. Anyway, shortly after taking this, twitter informed me there was a lunar eclipse going on. I didn't see it - much like the owls. Is it safe, therefore, in a moment of uncharacteristicly clear thinking, to draw a link between owls and lunar eclipses? I think we should be told.

I'm not working on Monday or Tuesday next week, so we're off to Swanage tomorrow morning. I shall be taking pictures of exciting birds at Durlston and Arne and finishing off each day by sipping on mulled cider and various ales at the Red Lion. It will be considerably better than commuting.