The title of this post is nothing to do with a rural drinking hole, but a reference to the birding this morning at Cossington.
I was there just after first light, and once again it was bloody cold (-3C). I had a quick look around Cossington Lock for a loitering juv Whooper Swan with no sign, and was then planning on trapsing off towards the sewerage farm to look down onto the Wanlip North lakes when John Hague called to say he'd join me any minute. Andy Cliff also appeared and the three of us hot (actually fecking cold) footed it to look for geese.
A good walk and a few minute later and we were scoping through a large sprawling goose flock, mainly Greylags and Canadas but a few
White-fronted Geese were also quickly spotted. Before long the hoped-for juvenile
Brent Goose gave itself up, quickly followed by a solitary
Pink-footed Goose. Excellent - two county ticks for me. The White-front counting was nigh on impossible, but we made a minimum of 9 including a juvenile. A couple of
Egyptian Geese also showed themselves - probably the biggest rarities in terms of Leicestershire (as opposed to Rutland where they are resident). A soaring Buzzard, loads of lapwings and assorted ducks were also noted before we headed back to the lock.
This time the
Whooper Swan was easily located milling about with a handful of adult Mute Swans. This bird is the epitome of the ugly duckling.
Damned ugly.
It was very animated though, constanly nodding its head and making noises. I grabbed a bit of crappy video in poor light - it actually looks pretty good on the PC but seems to get knackered through compression of some sort when uploaded. Anyway, you get the gist.
A quick stomp around Rectory Marsh at Cossington Meadows put up four
Snipe, but no Jacks. A pair of
Stonechats were knocking about - always great to see.
I then had a look around Chapel Lane off of Welford Road for a small group of Waxwings that were about yesterday - no joy. Maybe the big flock picked up at Loughborough this afternoon will still be knocking about tomorrow.
One of my favourite bands from my youth, and the old tracks still sound great today. I have almost all of their stuff on vinyl from the early Hansa releases to the Virgin days before they disbanded in October 1982, plus the live final offering Oil On Canvas. It must be obvious that I was to young to hear the early stuff on first release, I got into them somewhere between Quiet Life and Gentlemen Take Polaroids. I have to confess though that aside from odd tracks that Sylvian did with Ruichi Sakamoto, I never kept up with his or any of the other members solo stuff and have never heard the Rain Tree Crow work (Japan briefly reformed under this name).
The five studio albums - all superb as far as I'm concerned: Adolescent Sex (Hansa, March 1978), Obscure Alternatives (Hansa, October 1978), Quiet Life (Hansa, December 1979), Gentlemen Take Polaroids (Virgin, November 1980) & Tin Drum (Virgin, November 1981).
Here's a couple of tracks which demonstrate how the differing musical style over the years was more of a development rather than step-change. Visually though they changed significantly!
Communist China, from Adolescent Sex
Quiet Life, from Quiet Life (!)
The Art of Parties, from Tin Drum
My two favourite Japan tracks though are as different from all of the above as they are from each other:
Rhodesia, from Obscure Alternatives
Nightporter, from Gentlemen Take Polaroids
