new blindsimming expedition june 17th 2015

See last weeks blog.

Chris, my brother, thinks that I can carry on with my blindsimming visits to to the Bird Sanctuary alone (!) without my bird-watching friend who has gone off to Australia for six months.

Chris occasionally visits a building project which takes him past the village and lake/reservior where we have been going. Up to now, my friend met me off the bus and drove me up to the reservoir car-park, which I now know is at the north end of the reservoir. The south end, where there is the concrete dam which forms the reservoir and has a footpath which goes right round the reservoir is nearer to the village but not on the road to the car-park. Realising this, Chris then discovered that if I went one bus stop further on, out of the village and got off, there is another road up to the reservoir belonging to the Water Authority, with a gate so that only their traffic can use it, but which is open to pedestrians (walkers) and is therefore a good surface for me to follow safely right up to the water-side.

Remember that I start my blindsimming well before I get on the bus at the other end and that my friend appears to accept that I am totally blind (as I am then, almost), I have never seen the village nor the lake nor the Bird Reserve, nor even the bus, for that matter. I've seen the photo that Chris put on our website though.

So I was very doubtful about Chris's proposal.

However he is going to do the route with me, one morning each week for this month, bus ride and all, to persuade me it is okay and allow me to practise (blindfolded of course as before) and get confident to do it all on my own.

I will keep you up-to-date.

Jane

3rd June 2015 Summer coming on now.

As you will have gathered, I love blindsimming.

I am also most interested in birds (feathered variety)

Some bird enthusiasts are called “twitchers”! They charge about the country after rare birds and tick them off on the approved list of around ?? species in Britain alone.

Most enthusiasts though, call themselves bird watchers and many have their own “patch”, a local area that they know well and go to see the birds and watch their movements etc. They are particularly interested in migrants that come to Britain from overseas – summer visitors or winter visitors.

I don't belong to either of these categories. I think the “twitchers” are bonkers – as my friend Lucy thinks I am., they often cheat and frighten both the birds and the people living around where-ever they arrive with their powerful telescopes.

However, I can't call myself a bird watcher either. The only birds that I watch are out of the Kitchen window or else in passing when out socialising locally. (Me, I mean, not the birds!) I haven't even got binoculars.

Why am I telling you this?

If you go to my website, or read through my earlier blogs here, you will read about my birding outings with a very polite and helpful birdwatcher who appreciates my well developed bird sound recognition skill and believes that I have developed this to compensate for my total blindness when I'm with him, usually fortnightly. However in high summer and deep winter, we only meet up once a month

He is retired from work, otherwise he obviously wouldn't have the time to spend bird-watching as he does. Now that the summer visitors (birds) have all arrived. He is off to Australia for six months to visit relations there and see all the sights.

Help! What am I going to do for the next six months for my blindsimming outings?

Find something else to write about?

Jane.