Yearly archives: 2016

2016 Wildlife Log

December  17Thrush in garden24Collard Dove, wood Pidgeon and Magpie all sitting on the roof of the bird feeder.26Four Collard Doves sitting on power line   November  5Pied Wagtail seen vertically flying up the power pole26Scott applies slurry to First Field27Two Starlings seen in bird feeder eating fatballs   October  1Gave Deer and Middle Fields the final harrow of the year4Planted remains of the Grass seed in Deer and Middle field and patches in Paddock and Wildlife…


Meet Axel.

It soon became quite evident that 8 acres of land requires more than a rather antiquated ride on lawn mower and a shovel is not going to keep things tidy….


Observing Session 16, January

It’s been a while since I got up at ‘Stupid O’Clock’ to do a bit of observing. But waking at 3am and feeling reasonably alert, a peek through the window confirmed perfect observing conditions and too good an opportunity to miss. Of the three Collinder Clusters I observed this morning, fate chose ones ones with huge 2 to 3 degree diameters, so for once all these had to be observed using the TMB. In…


Observing Session 7, January

The first clear night of the year – although for only a couple of hours before the slow moving cloud started to roll in. Despite not having used the scope for two months, mount pointing was pretty accurate – with the first slew-to object only just outside the FOV of the 40mm. However, I wasted most of the session trying to keep the network up long enough to be allow the observing notes for Skytools 3…


Welcome to 2016

To put it quite frankly, the weather recently has been crap. Apart from one clear night on the 31st, December, where it looked pretty good until the point we got back from a  New Year’s party, I’ve not had one clear observing night since the end of October 🙁 2015 felt like a disappointing year for observations. The awful weather during the Spring and a rather lack lustre Summer wasn’t looking too promising on…