The boys are back (again)

We reached Yarner Wood not long past 10.00: our first visit this year and a wonderful sense of anticipation.

Although quite grey down at the car park, it was warm in the hide (nothing much to see – just a pair of Blue Tits exploring one of the nesting boxes ) and as we climbed the path, sun burning off the cloud and the sky turned blue. The woodland is still bare -branched, so it is easy to spot what there is, or isn’t, but it is filled with bird song: all the usual suspects (Robin, Wren, Blackbird, Blue Tit) and also Chiffchaff, Nuthatches, a Goldcrest, the drumming of one Woodpecker across the valley and another up the hill behind us, and a Raven seeing off a Buzzard.

Add to this Bumblebees on the bilberry, the occasional Peacock butterfly, and Wood ants warmed by the sun and busy.

It was a perfect Sunday morning – and then not one but two male Pied Flycatchers: the first by Box 46, and the second a little further on, engaging in some territorial argy-bargy with a Nuthatch. Last year Pied Flycatchers were first seen in Yarner on 7 April, and we didn’t see them until 21 April (when I posted The boys are back). They are early this year.

It may only be March, but for us Pied Flycatchers are one of the first signs that summer is really on its way.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot

Quite what Andy McNab would have made of the fiasco in eastern Libya is anyone’s guess, and, given the reluctance of our Special Forces to disclose any information at all, we are unlikely to hear very much more.

What is astonishing is how very 19th century it all seems.

A Chinook (if it was a Chinook – it may just be that that is the stock image the BBC uses when a large helicopter is involved) is not a gun boat, but the idea of sending an armed diplomatic party to parlay with the natives (without telling them first) is so very Empire.

And a “serious misunderstanding” (William Hague in the House of Commons) a perfect example of diplomatic language.

A legal education

Loved this from a somewhat snide article in the guardian.co.uk, Making the would-be barristers of tomorrow face harsh realities of today

Undergraduate students to a large extent have unformed minds,” hit back Cambridge University professor Christopher Forsyth. “There is a danger of teaching them to advise before they have a mastery of conceptual thought.”

Same goes for quite a lot of lawyers.

And as for the jaw-dropping comment from City Law School associate dean Susan Blake,

The law is an attractive profession. And a success rate of one in 10 is a hell of a lot better than you get with the lottery

she clearly missed out on being taught by Professor Forsyth.

Blair Take 2 (Friday)

Richard Norton-Taylor excellent in guardian.co.uk this evening on new evidence from Lord Goldsmith: Chilcot inquiry: Blair shut me out says former legal chief, Lord Goldsmith

I was particularly struck by,

The document contains a handwritten note by [Sir David] Manning [Blair’s foreign policy adviser], warning: “Clear advice from attorney on need for further resolution.” Blair scrawled in the margin: “I just don’t understand this.”

Didn’t get it then, doesn’t get it now, probably never will.

And as for Lord Goldsmith, read the late Tom Bingham’s analysis in The Rule of Law, pages 120 – 129.

A new year of birding

Lured by reports of Bitterns and Harriers, yesterday saw us at Exminster Marshes. Having asked Caroline to park a little closer to the edge, I got out of the passenger door, took a couple of paces backwards and one leg went into the ditch up to my thigh. What I had thought was firm ground was in fact dead reeds over nothing. And I had to clutch at a bank of stinging nettles to haul myself back up. It was not a very auspicious start: and I squelched around for the next hour. It wasn’t that I was cold (I was) but felt such a plonk (plus was quite shaken).

And the birding? Well, no Bitterns, and the Harriers, one Marsh and one Hen, had been sighted but had dropped down, out of sight, about 30 minutes before we arrived. But a Kingfisher, wildfowl everywhere, and the lady Smew preening on the canal. Not a bad trip at all.