Crows, possibly rooks, get pride of place. There are some trees behind our bungalow, one in particular of which seems to be favoured by crows for roosting (illustrated left), crows which like to make a great deal of noise when they go to bed at night and then again when they get up in the morning, roughly sunset and sunrise. One evening they got really excited and hundreds of them seemed to be flying & squawking around this particular tree, flying in something which reminded us of the bulbular clouds favoured by starlings. Never seen anything like it before, but then we have never slept in such close proximity to crows before. Present on other nights since, but not as numerous or as noisy.
Starlings next, our coming across perhaps a hundred of them roosting under the pier end bit of the canopy over the platform of Ryde Esplanade station. Some of them looked quite young. There was some contention for the top spots. (I have been seeing a lot more starlings about this year, for example a small flock grazing a few weeks back down the Longmead Road. No idea why).
Quite a lot of buzzard sightings and even more hearings, assuming that is that the mewing noises were indeed buzzards. The most spectacular sighting was in a small valley heading up towards Culver Down, where we saw the shadow of the buzzard before the buzzard itself. Then another, and then a bit of dead tree. First thought was that the bit of dead tree was an owl but eventually decided that it was another buzzard. Yet another buzzard was seen from below, looking up at the Culver cliffs from Yaverland beach, being very struck on that occasion by the white flashes under the outboard end of the wings.
There were also seagulls, exhibiting the very special white of their wings which you get when seeing them from below against a bright blue sky.
Rather more small birds than is usual in Epsom, with the flashiest sighting being of a gray wagtail in Shanklin Chine, a very pretty and distinctive bird with grey head & shoulders and yellow breast. Various swallows and skylarks. Maybe a green finch. Some other small birds with wagging tails on the shelves at Bembridge but we did not know what they were. But there was compensation there in the form of three white egrets, last seen down the Longmead Road (see 22nd December last). Also a very large black diver, a bit big for a cormorant.
The odd kestrel. Rather more magpies, although not as many as in Epsom. The odd owl-like sound at night, but nothing clear enough to claim as a tweet aural. Nor did we see any foxes; perhaps you don't get them in the country despite not being allowed to hunt them down with their natural predators, that is to say fox hounds. Maybe we should redirect the people who get excited about fox hunting to tigers, to mount a campaign to convert tigers to vegetarianism. In which we would have to put aside the people who detect life forces in plants with ammeters - the sort of people that Aldous Huxley came across in India between the wars, written about in his book about his journey around the world, the name of which eludes me for the moment.
PS 1: the book has now been run down and I find it to be called, as I had suspected, 'Jesting Pilate'. This particular sort of person was an eminent Indian scientist called Sir J. C. Bose CSI CIE FRS. See page 174 et seq. in the Paragon House edition of 1991.
PS 2: Huxley was fond of using quotations for the titles of his books. This one is particularly obscure and is taken from the opening sentence of an essay by Francis Bacon written some time around 1600 and which refers to John 18:38.
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