What a nice way to spend a weekend, the cats just lay there in the sun, stirring not too frequently to go get a drink from the bird bath or wander in for some food. Note the wooden bird feeder in the background, we had to put a plant in it and 2 solar lights as the white cat used to sleep in there on the cool stones and when the birds fed above her the crap used to rain down.







This "Greater Crested" AWACs flew round the coast near St Marys Island for over an hour on Tuesday evening. When I lived near Geilenkirchen in Germany we saw them all the time and had the opportunity to get inside one on a couple of occassions. I have never seen them round here though.







Also at St Marys there was a substantial amount of Curlews although they were scattered all over which was different from normal as they tended to congregrate in 2 places on the foreshore to the South of the lighthouse and the field at the back of Nature Reserve.







A trip to Killie Lake on Sunday to see the Great Crested Grebes was extremely fruitful, we sat and watched a pair and their 3 chicks going about their normal routine, over the hour that we watched them the male (presume it was the male) went up the far end of the lake and back 7 times and brought a fish back each time. The same chick rode on the mothers back all the time till the last few minutes then as soon as it was "dumped" off another one jumped on. When we left we decided to go to the smaller lake and bugger me if there wasnt another Grebe with one chick only, it seemed to be doing the babysitting and the feeding as we watched for another 40mins but there was no sign of a partner even after a good sweep with the bins.

Couldnt pluck up the wherewithawl to go out tonight so just sat and looked out of the window, watching birds and caught the 10min docu on BBC2 about the Terns.