Didn't take the digital camera with us, so I 've had to wait and scan a few.
here's the only one we got of all of us together.
L-R Your host, Flo, Alice, Trx,(bump), Stan, Elsi

Lovely...:p

Not sure I can really be doing with all this retrospective blogging.
There are a couple of other highlights of the holiday that I want to note hear, but I can't be arsed anymore with copying out my diary.

Wednesday evening, because we had more time having eaten earlier, I took Bunday up on his invitation to go over and see the Glaslyn Ospreys. It was a LONG WAY but we found the nest site easy enough, a mile or two up the valley from the RSPB reserve and 'viewpoint'. Apparently you can't see the birds from there at all, other than via NestCam or some such bollocks.
Means the birds stay undisturbed by dudes and grockles though I suppose. Bunday has found a great vantage point to watch the nest from a layby, where he also picked up Pied Flicker on Monday.
Easy tospot the nest atop the pine tree, and Mr Osprey flew in after we'd only been there a minute or three. No food for Mrs Osprey, but they did lots of crazy courtship and chicken dancing. Always appear to me to be such shaggy, untidy and rather manky birds, Ospreys, never quite managing to be as elegant and generally cool as most other raptors.
Brilliant hit though, and the first Opspreys I've seen since my spectacular early morning find at Farmoor 13 years ago!

Drove thence round the bends to the Cob at Porthmadog, stopping on the way to view the nest again from the exact opposite side.
Pulled up outside the legendary Cob Records (sadly closed of course, this being about 9pm) and noticed there seemed to be somethng on fire somewhere in the town.
An old man came out of his house to see, and he was carrying the most incredible pair of bins I have ever seen. At least a foot long, and with an object lens on at least 80mm!! Completely ridiculous, and made even more so by the red glow of the sunset on the lenses. He looked like that scene from the TV Room at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory!! Another of those Great Moments in World Birding.

And it was followed, almost unbelievably by another. There;s a lot of mileage in this evening I think. We walked into the Cob over the footbridge under the gaze of a group of teenagers on top of the clifff face looking down on us. Loads of verbal abuse, mostly good natured, ad of course we looked up at them. Couldn't see the lads that were obviously up there shouting at us, just two girls. Why is there ALWAYS one attractive one and one 'minger'??
For the first time In my life I was mooned at - by a fifteen yr old girl!
Rather splendid actually - I don't know quite what she wanted to achieve or how offensive it was meant to be, but it din't have that effect on me at all?
I called back "That'll do nicely" or some crass comment, and had the others in absolute hysterics.
Silly I suppose, and a crazy thing to do. Certainly made a lasting image in my head.

So that's probably it for the holiday, unless something else particularly comes back to me. Real life is far too busy and exciting for there to be enough time to catch up with last week.

I've just come in from the annual nightjar evening in the Forest, at Yew Tree Heath again this year, Bunday himself coming along with me and Dr Dave.
I wonder if we aren't still a week early.
Beautiful clear evening didn't help as it turned very chilly quickly and there were hardly any moths on the wing, but we were surrounded by nightjar song almost all the time from about 9.15 onwards. Very little aerial activity, soo I suspect the males are still establishing territories and either not yet displaying, or the ladies are sitting on eggs and there are not yet any young to feed. certainly we had very little aerial activity tonight and saw the briefest glimpses of only two birds. Only one instance of wing-clapping, which was a bit of a disappointment.
Not that nightjarring can ever be disappointing. It is an almost magical experience and never fails to inspire me every year. And we did have quick views of two Dartfords too, and lots of song, so nothing really to complain about in tavern afterwards, where the Old Thumper went down beautifully.

Work has picked up a pace in the last couple of days, and I have been asked to consider taking on the Project management of the new DK World Atlas for LJ!!! A ridiculously huge project that is probably worth more than £30K over the next four months but may require up to a thousand man hours. I'm up for it, but D and I need to talk it thru properly. He was out today showing London-based media-buying wankers around the Cruise Terminal sites.
It's quite shocking the amount of money that some companies will pay just to have a poster up somewhere advertising maybe a book, an album or a credit card. Upwards of £10K for a three month campaign??? Hello???