Remembering....

....and a couple of pics the first of which is an excellent - here I go again with my excellence - one of the Shag and is with my thanks to Mark Fellowes who can be linked to HERE to see some superb photography and comments on his trips.

As for the title of the post, well there won't be too many visitors to Birds2blog who will have known John Leedal but a few who I do know look in on the blog from time to time - if not daily basis - will most certainly remember him, and if I can be allowed the opportunity to do so I would like to mark the anniversary of Johns death five years ago today 17 April 2005. John was many things to me not least a very good friend and mentor, a birder and lover of wildlife in general and perhaps in particular flowers, plants and fungi, indeed on the latter he even had the opportunity to have a new one to science named after himself which he had discovered and sent to a contact at Kew....no mean guy this John Leedal!

I am left with many abiding memories of this man, too many to contemplate mentioning here, but one I will recall were the numerous visits we made together to the Rusland Valley in the Lakes to stake out at a place with a commanding view over this beautiful valley with the hope the Honey Buzzards - which were nesting in the area at the time - would show which true to form often did and true to form often didn't, but these were halcyon days remembered with affection. On two occasions whilst in this area and following an alert we dashed off to a 'twitch' one of which was to see a Woodchat Shrike which had put in an appearance at Leighton Moss, and the other - to follow up another alert - to see Bee Eaters which - believe it or not - were just around the corner from where we were actually staked out for the HB's....fortuitous as John would say.

I wandered my way round to Johns house this morning to give his wife Rita a nice bunch of flowers proud of the fact I had remembered the date and the man who taught me so much about the birds we all love to see and observe....Cheers John the memories live on.

The Sardinian Warbler is the second image from Mark Fellowes both of which were the result of his recent trip to Mallorca....Thanks for allowing me the use of your images Mark they are much appreciated and not just be me I would imagine.