Overdue county tick

Turtle Dove finally hit the back of the net this morning at Wymondham rough, singing near the entrance at c.10am, a long overdue county tick and one I'm glad to get - Its not hard to imagine in 30years time me taunting the next generation of Leicester birders with, "well, I've got Turtle Dove on my county list, so suck on that" such is the sad decline of this species in Britain. Happily they are still common on the continent but their days as a breeding species in Britain do seem to be numbered.

You might ask why I was at Wymondham rough (a solid hours drive from my house, somewhere near Melton) at 10am this morning - It was my first session volunteering with the LRWT as part of their weekly habitat management programme. This is something I should have been doing ages ago as not only does it give me valuable practical experience in the job sector that I wish to build a career in, it also gives me the opportunity to improve my identification skills on things that arent birds as my knowledge is woefully incomplete with anything that doesn't have feathers! Anyway, the task today was removing invasive creeping thistles from a large section of meadowland. These highly opportunistic thistles can spread rapidly and quickly become dominant within an area if left unmanaged and so regular efforts are made to keep them under control at this site.

Site of mass thistle genocide

In other news the pain of having that Lampard goal disallowed in Bloemfontein was lessened slightly this evening when England became the benefactors of a similar decision and managed to sneak to the top of their group! Bring on the Italians, lets have it!