3 April : a wettish Sunday

Well, it's wet as I write this in the late afternoon. After not getting out yesterday for reasons totally beyond my control and today as the knees are still grumbling and the only answer from the vets is to rest the damned things and keep taking the analgesics, I decided to get on with getting this blog upto date (yesterday) and translate them today for the Spanish version. However, there is always something to enliven life, and thus it has been.

About 14.15, just as we were about to have lunch (3 members of the household are VERY slow on Sundays), there was a mobile call from Bob Hibbett. "Andy, do Basking Sharks occur down here?"

To which my reply was that I hadn't a clue and in turn he replied that he was watching one off the Guadalhorce. And as he lives down in Cornwall, he knows what they are like. At the same time life became complex as two warblers were lurking as only warblers can lurk down in the shrubbery in the garden. What to do? Look at the warblers and then ring friends who would know. One was a smashing little male Subalpine that I saw again after lunch, but what the other was remains to be seen as a Kestrel appeared and sat in the pine. However, as after lunch there were two Willow Warblers in the garden also, it sems reasonable to think that the unidentified bird was one of them. But I digress.

Believing that Salva was at sea, I rang Xulio in Galicia (both are marine biologists) and with great difficulty made contact as he was out in the country somewhere, but he did tell me that Salva was home in Málaga so I rang him and squeaks of excitement rent the air and then I rang Antonio Tamayo. So, the result was that in the rain which was steadily increasing in intensity, Bob, Salva, Antonio and myself saw the beast - distant but definitely one, which stuck its nose out of the water from time to time, which along with the big dorsal fin and the tail also breaking the surface.