Thought I would give you all an update on my walk to work routine. Things are going well I have not missed a day yet, in the three weeks I have been walking.
I am getting to know the wildlife that is about on the route, and this morning I thought may be there was an ark nearby, as all the birds seem to come in two’s. First I saw a Grey Heron fly along the canal, and later another one fly the other direction. In a regular spot I saw two Bull Finches (male and female), they seem to always been in the same short section of the canal, and I suspect that are always there unless someone has passed before me and scared them off. Then I saw a Kingfisher fly past twice, it was a bright iridescent blue because it was flying away with the sun behind it. It may have been the same bird twice, but I am claiming it as two different birds!
Other stuff that is often out there are Hares in the fields adjacent to the Buckland Road, as well as an elusive warblerish bird that I have yet to get in the binoculars.
This blog entry is bought via windows speech recognition. I thought I would give the features a try. I am using windows of this for you access the speech recognition features from the speech recognition option in control panel, you need to make sure that your microphone is well placed and the sound levels are right. It helps if you go through the tutorial as lists is the way of teaching your computer help to understand the nuances of your voice.
So far so good as long as I speak then this seems to do a good job for recognising my voice. For example in this blog entry I have trouble with the first sentence two of the words were not recognise correctly. I have also noticed that’s even though I selected United Kingdom as the language it appears to be using American spelling, for example if recognizing oneself with a Z.
If this works out well the idea for be for me to record log entries on a recording device, then find a way of getting windows to convert the recording into a text. I am not sure how successful this will be part I have noticed that there are quite a few open source software programs that claim to do the job.
I suspect that I’m need to get a better microphone because the one that I am currently using does not go very far into the from the section on the microphone test programme.
Speech options
This blog entry is bought via windows speech recognition. I thought I would give the features a try. I am using windows of this for you access the speech recognition features from the speech recognition option in control panel, you need to make sure that your microphone is well placed and the sound levels are right. It helps if you go through the tutorial as lists is the way of teaching your computer help to understand the nuances of your voice.
So far so good as long as I speak then this seems to do a good job for recognising my voice. For example in this blog entry I have trouble with the first sentence two of the words were not recognise correctly. I have also noticed that’s even though I selected United Kingdom as the language it appears to be using American spelling, for example if recognizing oneself with a Z.
If this works out well the idea for me to record blog entries on a recording device, then find a way of getting windows to convert the recording into a text. I am not sure how successful this will be part I have noticed that there are quite a few open source software programs that claim to do the job.
I suspect that I’m need to get a better microphone because the one that I am currently using does not go very far into the from the section on the microphone test programme.
Anglo/French film about a troubled divorcee who wished things were different, and has even considered suicide. Things start to change when Eric Cantona (his hero) enters his life, in the form of hallucinations and one of his sons gets into a bit of bother with a local thug. The film is well acted and there is much swearing to good effect. Eric Cantona is hard to hear but has some great lines. 4/5
Well we are off to Tess + Roger’s wedding. Congratulations guys. Unfortunately that involves a rather slow journey down the A40 in the rain. We keep being passed by the same cyclists when the traffic lights change. Our previous feelings of sympathy for their damp plight have been replaced by those of envy as they are actually getting somewhere. Anyway that’s enough about the weather, let’s discuss mobile communication devices.
Helen says she does not need a new mobile phone, yet often in the car the complaint is she would like to be able to browse the Internet, something that her wind up phone does not do. There appear to be two front runners; the I Phone or an Android phone [ed. I dunno the difference TBH – Helen]. The I Phone scores for its slick UI, I Tunes capabilities and Apple design. On the other hand, the Android has a slide out full keyboard, is open source and backed by Google. Decisions, decisions, guess its up to Helen. Might be good if she turns the bloody thing on too.
There is a local nature reserve near where I live called Millhoppers. It is owned by the Butteryfly Conservation society. I went out for a spin on the bike this afternoon and spend a little while taking in the nature there.
Whilst I sat contemplating I saw at least 3 (possibly 4) wrens, they were hunting for food, flying from tree to tree to flower stalk. The wren is the most populous bird in the UK and I guess it is not unexpected that I would see so many in such a small patch.
Also saw plenty of butterflies including common blue, they get Holly Blue’s in spring.
I have recently been trying out a new (free) GPS tracking system called BuddyWay (link). It works with any GPS enabled phone (pucks work too), you can set the frequency of the updates and how often they are sent to the site. there are clients for most mobile phones. See the screen shot of a walk Helen and I did at the weekend.
The final day of the weekend, we were determined to make the most of the weekend in terms of birds seen and time spend by the sea. We were first in for breakfast, a great veggie affair mushrooms, potatoes, eggs, beans, spinach and tomatoes, then we checked out and headed down to the car park at Titchwell, strangely we were not the first birdwatchers to arrive.
Dead deer on the beach
Apparently there was another very high tide which was about to turn, this meant that all the waders that normally spend their time on the mud uncovered by the tide would be on the scrapes of the bird reserve! True to form there were hundreds of them, knot, godwits, plovers, turnstone, the full monty. We headed on out to the beach (eider in eclipse plummage), then took a stroll down the beach for a mile or so to the end of the sand spit.
On the way back we spotted no less that 5 spoonbill, and a bloody-nosed beetle, and so after spending some money in the RSPB shop we had to head home.
The weekend of great weather continues. On Saturday we decided to revisit a walk we had done when we were staying at Salthouse in May. We dropped the car off in Burnham Overy Staithe, which proved to be difficult because there was a very high tide early in the day and all the sailors were out sailing and the normal car park was underwater. We found a spot and left the car, the plan was to walk to Holkham then get the bus back to the car.
We headed off along the sea wall, the tide was higher than we have ever seen. It was on the turn and the currents were quite fast, and there were not a lot of waders about. When eventually got to a junction where right is to Holkham and left is towards the end of a peninsula where we had spied a couple of bird hides in May. In the way we came across a big flock of Linnet. At the end of the spit we could see all the sailors that had either sailed out or got a ferry to the island.
Paddling
We walked along the beach and after a few hundred yards got our shoes and socks off. We then spent the next couple of miles bare foot paddling through the waves. We were however not as unclad as the nudists on the nudist section of the beach, (why do they insist on standing up and strutting about rather than just sunbathing like the rest of us.
We eventually got to the strange area that gets flooded by the sea but not on every tide. There was lots of Samphire growing around there and the sand/mud was very slippery. We then reluctantly joined the public masses and headed for a bite to eat at the Holkham cafe. The bus then took us back to the car, but before heading back we checked out an Art exhibition in the local village hall.
That evening I had Samphire for a starter folled by Mackrel with runner beans and a mustard and gooseberry sauce!
I have not updated the blog of a couple of weeks, not sure why but here you go I will make amends. This weekend Helen and I have been to Snettisham, for the weekend, we stayed at The Rose aand Crown a great pub with real ale and some rooms to stay in. The food is great. If you want to stay I would recommend the new rooms rather than the quirky ones up the stairs above the bar.
We arrived on Friday at lunchtime after having spent the night at Mum and Dads, (thanks for the roast veg and couscous lovely), and had lunch at the pub, before setting off for a bird walk.
Gall wasp
The walk was from Holme to Thornham, we parked in Thornham then got the Coast Hopper to the Holme coast road stop. Whilst walking up the coast road there were loads of plum trees of different types all of them very sweet and ripe. We headed off over the golf course and then along the board walks to The Firs for a break in the hide to wait out a rain shower. Then it was off again through the woods and out along the sea wall. There we saw loads of butterflies everywhere we spotted about 15 different varieties, including a few we had not see before. As we got back to Thornham we had great close up views of three marsh harriers and we saw what we think was a bank vole.
There is a track of the walk and bus journey here.
