Wednesday 7 April 2010

Leicester not forget!

TUB and John Hague
As usual, the photographs documenting my adventures (this time in Leicester) are coming in several days later than the trip itself. This is nobody's fault it's just that there is so much to do these days that downloading and sorting out pictures has become a mega job. The above picture features me with John Hague who very kindly guided me around Leicester on Sunday.

Today was our first day up on Tower 42 watching for migrants. Despite the predicted early south easterlies and no rain, we had north westerlies and almost continuous drizzle come the afternoon. We saw the usual city birds like Lesser Black-backs and Carrion Crows plus a large female Sparrowhawk with a full crop and at least two different Peregrines including one that spectacularly stooped near us to despatch an unfortunate pigeon. We later saw the bird eating it on Tower Bridge!

The most unfortunate incident was that documentary maker, Ceri Levy, who was up with us shooting the making of the Tower 42 story, suddenly collapsed. At first we thought that he had vertigo but when he still couldn't stand up due to dizziness an hour later we got a bit concerned. Ceri is a rotund little fella, so getting him back down through the veritable obstacle course that is the plant room of the Tower - which you have to negotiate to get to and from the last floor that is served by a lift - was no mean feat.

Eventually an ambulance took him away. We learnt later that his heart rate had dropped to just 40 beats a minute, his sugar levels were way up and that he had a blood clot close to his heart. Needless to say, the surgeons operated immediately and his wife told me that he is expected to make a full recovery but they are keeping him in for a few days.

We wish you speedy recovery Ceri and perhaps you should avoid running up and down tall buildings for a while!

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