The sun is coming

The past couple of days have been particularly busy for me and it all started once I had pressed the 'send' button on my section of The London Bird Report. As you could probably tell, it wasn't the most exciting thing that I achieved this week.

I had a lovely email from Audrey Parry, fundraiser at the Conwy RSPB Reserve. They had successfully raised a load of money to help fix up their reserve. She loved the piece that I wrote for them about a walk around Wormwood Scrubs. She was bowled over. That was nice. I also had phone calls from the Polish and Portuguese tourist boards regarding my proposed trips to Krakow and Lisbon respectively. Both trips are for research to write urban birding articles. The Poles are offering me a couple of nights accommodation but I have to fly myself out there. The Portuguese on the other hand are flying me out, offering four nights accommodation and a guided tour of several sites including the ornithologically famous Tagus Estuary as well as the Sado and Castro Verde Estuaries. I'll be heading out to all those places plus Budapest during May and June. 

I also had my trip to Exeter in Devon confirmed for the first weekend in April. I'm hoping to see the Cirl Buntings that reside near Exeter Hospital - if they are still there that is, as the last time I saw them was when I was with the BTO back in '97.

Earlier today, I also had a phone call from the Sunday Express asking if I would be willing to go on record as a The One Show presenter and dish the dirt on the Carol Thatcher 'Gollywog - gate'. I politely replied that I was not there and therefore couldn't comment. Those kind of interviews are potential minefields that possess the strong possibility of blowing up in peoples faces and ruining careers in the process. Of course, if they wanted me to generally talk about racism then that would have been different. But this wasn't really about racism and more about the daughter of Britain's first female prime minster.

This evening, I spent several hours in an editing suite in Brick Lane, deepest East London, cutting together a 3 minute aural piece on a Dawn Chorus walk that I recorded at The Scrubs last May. Hopefully, we will have it finished for future broadcast within the next couple of weeks.

Finally, I played football in the morning. We lost 4-3 against a team who's average age was 20-something compared to our average which was closer to 120! It wasn't as bad as it seemed though because none of the goals were my fault (defensive errors) and we were 4-0 down for most of the game.