There is a red Kite feeding centre fairly close to here. Above is a picture of them waiting for their dinner. This is a closer picture of one of them (slightly blurred, but not too bad):

It is an amazing sight to see them all swirling round in the sky, and swooping down to get their meat.

Cheers, Tom.

When I am in a forest, I normally expect the leaves to be green. This isn't always the case, as can be seen above.

Red is the colour of energy, of action. It is the colour of both love and anger. It is Manchester United, danger and blood. And it is lovely leaves

Cheers, Tom.

There has been a lot of talk about spying recently: America spying on its own citizens, Britain using the American spy network to spy on its own citizens, every country spying on every other country. It all kicked off because of “whistle blower” Edward Snowden who said “US agencies gathered and shared phone and web data with its allies”. In a nutshell, anyone's phone calls and emails might be “monitored”.

The most surprising thing about this for me is that anyone is surprised. When I first started using computer networks back in the early 1980s, everyone thought governments did this. It became common to add a “signature” to all your message board posts and emails containing keywords such as terrorist, bomb, drugs, CIA, etc. The idea was that it would make the monitoring job impossible because too many messages contained the keywords they were looking for.

Skip forward 30 years and suddenly everyone is surprised this is going on. Yesterday, William Hague said very publicly:

“UK and US citizens should be confident their intelligence agencies operate within the law”

I.e. it does go on, it's legal, and it is going to continue. It's thoroughly immoral of course, and is unlikely to be useful anyway. If MI6 think they are going to “intercept” a message in clear text saying:

“We now have the explosives and will blow up X at time Y to punish Z”

then they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Cheers, Tom.

"May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun
And find your shoulder to light on,
To bring you luck, happiness and riches
Today, tomorrow and beyond"

After a wet start to Spring and lots of sun over the last week, nature appears to be going into overdrive.

A fine sight it is, to see a forest exploding with green life.

Cheers, Tom.

It looks great up there

In a post last week, I talked about the weird look of a dried up area of woodland that is normally wet. Here are 2 more pictures of that area:

I reckon I could get a good album cover from these.

Cheers, Tom.

He's a bit windswept, but definitely still a dandy!

We have had a glorious few days of weather. Let's hope summer is really here now.

Cheers, Tom.

Sometimes empty:

Sometimes not:

Always interesting

Cheers, Tom.

...That's how the Light Gets in.

Cheers, Tom.

The term "Impressionism" in art came about because of This picture by Claude Monet. Monet said:

"Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of me. I had sent a thing done in Le Havre, from my window, sun in the mist and a few masts of boats sticking up in the foreground. ... They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn't really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: 'Put Impression.'"

The photo above shows my impression of a wood.

Cheers, Tom.

I am used to seeing bluebells as a mass, surrounded by green. So, I thought it would be nice to look very closely at one. It's amazing what details spring out with such a close look.

Cheers, Tom.

The picture above shows part of a wooded area which is normally underwater. It has dried out because of the recent weather, leaving a peculiar mass of dry vegetation. I really like the peculiar look of it.

Cheers, Tom.

I mentioned yesterday that we had been in some woods that were unusually dry. The picture above is from the area that isn't so dry. The bluebells started late this year, but are still going strongly.

Cheers, Tom.

This afternoon, we went for a walkies in some woods which frequently become inundated with water. Most times I have been there before, there has been a couple of feet of water in one part of it. Today, presumably because of the very dry last couple of months, the normally wet areas were completely dry. For the next few days, I will be posting some of the pictures I took there.

The fungi above appeared in several different places, some large and some small. I really like the orangey-brown colour.

Cheers, Tom.

How badly do you want to get your personal ball?

Cheers, Tom.

P.S. Performance here is still very poor: it took me 3 attempts to post this.

Some people would call the picture above "over-exposed" because of the bit top left. Strictly speaking they would be correct, but if I hadn't done that the waves and the headland would have been too dark. This photography game can be a tricky balancing act between light and dark, sometimes.

I don't mind the bright bit top left as it matches the darker bit top right and makes it feel balanced. I could have zoomed in a bit more, but I rather like the wide expanse.

Cheers, Tom.

All over the world, people seem to like watching the sun rise and the sun set. It gives familiarity and a sense of rhythm and I think must be comforting as well as beautiful. I'd like to see the sun rise more often, but that is complicated by me not being too good at mornings and being on the West coast.

Cheers, Tom.

Invigilation again today, all day. The poor old students don't get a rest on Saturday, and neither do we! I really really need my day off tomorrow!

Cheers, Tom.

I was talking about Day dreaming in exams yesterday, so here is the song. The music doesn't start for the first minute:

Cheers, Tom.

Yes, it's exam time. Students up and down the country are taking their exams. For the next 2 and a bit weeks, Helen and I are being exam invigilators. It might not quite be the most boring job in the world, but it must be a close run thing.

When I am in the exam rooms, studiously watching the students being studious, I dream of the outdoors.

Cheers, Tom.

My last post showed a couple of things at the back of our village. Also there at the back is the church above.

The allotments are just the other side of the church.

Cheers, Tom.

If you walk towards the North end of Borth, you get to a golf course. Cross the golf course (on the public path) and the railway line and you get to this:

It's Borth Bog, properly called "Cors Fochno". Carry on ahead until you meet the river, turn right and you eventually get to this view:

That is Borth train station from "the other side".

Cheers, Tom.

I'm sure I can hear a hiss...

Some glitch kept the picture above in my camera and not copied onto my computer - I suspect I must have accidentally protected it from deletion. But now I've fixed the problem, here it is

Cheers, Tom.

Last night, Helen and I sat on the balcony and watched the sun coming down. The picture above is from last year, at about the same time. The song to accompany the picture is Steely Dan, "Babylon Sisters":

Cheers, Tom.

I once overheard a boy saying to his mum "It's boring here, there's nothing to do"! Perhaps one day he will understand why she likes it.

Cheers, Tom.

Can you see Dan there at the back, dwarfed by them? They even look bigger than the houses!

It's lucky that sheep are so friendly

Yesterday, I posted some pictures of a Fish to be identified. Thanks to all those who assisted, it was a Ray of some sort.

A few people expressed concern that it might not have made it back to the sea from it's tide pool, so above is a wide angle shot of the beach. The large pool to the left is where it was trapped. It was quite long and at least 50cm deep, and the tide was on its way in. So, the chances were good for the big fishie

Cheers, Tom.

I'm sure there are some knowledgeable fish people around, so perhaps you could tell me what this is:

It was splashing around in a large pool left by the tide.

Cheers, Tom.