They think it's all over...

...and it is now. The London Olympics, that is. Celebrity bloggers like Jonathan Lethbridge had a bit of a downer on it all at first, in his case based on perhaps understandable concern about having Surface-to-Air Missiles pointed at his patch. Mind you, Weymouth and Portland birders have had whole Royal Navy destroyers pointing at theirs during the sailing events, and I haven't heard them complaining. Which other Dorset birders will tell you is quite unusual.

Personally though I've loved it. I don't think there is a sport I haven't watched, and I'm a terrible purist normally. Whether it was Gong the Chinese lady shot-putter, whose blood curdling screams made the Wimbledon grunters sound like pussy cats, overgrown kids falling off their BMXs or Belarussian rhythmic gymnasts who could teach Team GB's footballers a thing or two about ball control, I've lapped it all up.

The children and their mum were away for most of the fortnight, so I was a bit worried that they were running around their campsite, jumping over climbing frames and cycling around the countryside when they could have been at home being inspired to lead a healthier life on the sofa with me, and my takeaways. On the up side, with them away I got to watch way more sport on TV than normal, and squeeze in more visits to the local patch than would otherwise have been the case. In fact, that was the only real problem I encountered over the whole two weeks - choosing between sport and birding every week night when neither is usually an option. The almost complete absence of pretty pictures from this post is a clue to which option generally won...

There were other minor niggles of course. In the case of London 2012 it was probably overuse of the phrase 'inspire a generation' by media types trying to sound profound when they had nothing particularly profound to say. That was going to be it on the negative side until, as I was writing this, the camera zoomed in on the cream of British politics dancing to the cream of British music, the Spice Girls, during the closing ceremony. Now, Jonathan, do you see how those Surface-to-Air Missiles might have their uses?


Kingfisher: one of the highlights of several sprints to the patch this week, generally between the cycling finishing and the athletics starting.