Alive And Kicking !

Merry Christmas everyone !

Jeezo things have been hectic lately ! Normal service will be resumed again on Loxia Fantastica I promise. My time has been spread (too thinly possibly) between many things lately, some of them unrewarding it has to be said, some hopefully not so. Please also remember like most people I do actually have a job, which I love, and that (sadly) it is not a full time researchers post for RSPB studying Crossbills (as some people have wrongly thought in the past !). I am, at the moment, drenched in sonagrams - the weather is just too crappy for serious crossbilling, though hope to get out later in the week. I also have a new 'toy' to play with from Santa.

A couple of weeks ago I was down on Rainbow Warrior before it set off to Oslo and then to Copenhagen, sadly not with me on it ( edit: some avid readers of Loxia Fantastica may be interested to know that in a previous 'life' I was in fact a Marine Scientist SO Grade working at the Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen. I would do a few months at sea every year on research vessels. My paricular field of speciality was larval fish and micro and macro zooplankton. A long way from Crossbills !). Please sign up to the various campaigns that Greenpeace are undertaking, especially register your dismay at the failure of the UN to agree on legally binding emission controls, even though for once the UK government seemed proactive during and after the summit. A particular disgrace is how several Greenpeace campaigners have been banged up in a Danish prison, possibly in solitary, until Jan 7th for a peaceful and dignified protest - they 'gatecrashed' a state dinner and held up banners. Wow, if that is what happens for a mild "breach of the peace" in Denmark ( and I use the term "breach of the peace" loosely as it seemed a dignified silent and peaceful protest to me) then what would happen for something more serious like your dog crapping on the pavement ? I think the Danes had egg on their face that their security at a State function with many world leaders attending was so pathetic. Actually, make that non existant.

Highlight of my birding journal recently was a collybita Chiffchaff in my garden in first week of December. My previous latest record was 22nd Nov in 2005........er, not that I keep lists like. I guess the climate is warming after all then....