Good clear conditions at Fly late afternoon which 100 % light cloud cover, some fine drizzle and a light NE>2.
The skies were disappointingly quiet with just a few Herring and Lesser Black Backed gulls over whilst 6 Herrings and 14 LBBs were lined up on the north shore waiting for an opportune
time for a chick or egg to be left unprotected.
Common Sandpipers were everywhere and very active in the cooler temperatures along with Redshank but a thorough scope of all the bankings, without the problem of heat shimmer, failed to find the Dunlin flock and it was,nt until I was tackling up that 2 dropped in to the south shore which made me set up again for a few distant shots.
On the way back I pulled over by the Nolstar field to check for Dotterel and as I stopped a Cuckoo flew over the front of the car from the direction of Cold Edge and disappeared from view down Slaughter Gap. Lower down the road I stopped again seeing a small bird flitting around an old hen hut but it turned out to be a Robin and not a Black Redstart as hoped.
The old hen hut reminded me of when I was a lad and we used to keep hens for eggs and breeding chicks. We made our own huts which were known as en oiles and in the side of the hut was a trapdoor so the hens could get in and out during the day to lay and then at night we would close the trapdoor to keep foxes out, this trapdoor was known as a bob oile in Queensbury talk.
My dad once sent me down to the handyman shop to get a catch for the bob oile. The assistant looked at me blank so I explained " its a catch for a bob oile in an en oile". Still looking blank the shop owner appeared, who was a Queensbury chap, and got me exactly what I wanted.
That was in the days when you could go in there and buy a pund of clart hearded nails.
I threw this true tale in for Keighley Moor birder James Longbottom who e mailed me saying he and his Dad enjoyed reading a bit of Yorkshire dialect. Theres plenty more where that came from James.
BS