Ambience: Late Spring has finally got her full grip on the landscape. Exotic, imported and native plants, birds, animals and insects intoxicate, swoon, preen, cavort and clamour for their position in the sun in their mad rush to procreate.  The usual myopic humans argue far and wide about the hierarchical order of living things: words like `introduced,' `protected' and `native' are however ignored by a generous sun, wind and rain which feed and bless with equal abundance all things that grow and multiply. Even my begging, hand-fed magpies happily ignore me now and feed their gawky offspring on the carpet of worms and snails that fill my garden.  And such abundance: the more I cut and distribute my roses the more the blooms grow back. 

My maps are soaking, my finderscope clouds up and a ground fog surrounds me. The nearby wagtails chirrups away at its mid-night song. I have read that this is the female who sings on her nest. She has been singing now for two months! I guess it's one of those families where the kids never leave home. 

Ambience: Tuesday night was very quiet. The farmers have all of their cattle and sheep in corrals away from the village. All the summer people have returned to their homes in the big cities. A high pressure system had just moved in so the seeing and transparency were good. Almost no wind but the temperatures were falling during my four and a half hours of work. The temp. started at about 10º and was down to about 4º at midnight when I called it an evening.  The biggest problem of working with the video cam is trying to get the double on the small chip so it takes a good bit of fiddling around but it is nice when the double is finally in the center of the screen and you can sit back and enjoy the view for a few minutes. Unlike Steve's video cam mine is monochrome so you cannot see any color.