Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Mr Osprey has arrived.

A week ago I published a post about all the effort that had gone into preparing a suitable pad for a pair of Ospreys on the lookout for a summer retreat where they could settle down and bring up a family. It was on the River Dyfi, near Machynlleth. This morning, the male bird turned up and can be seen in this photograph pondering the suitability of the accommodation. No stone is being left unturned in the efforts to make him feel at home, including painting the post in a delightful shade of birdsh** magnolia (complete with fishy streaks perhaps). The BBC have covered this story here. Now all of us are awaiting the arrival of the female. I remember a shockingly sexist old rugby colleague of mine who used to say "the trouble with birds is that they're always late and never there when you want one". I always used to reprimand his disrespectful tone when speaking of the more fragrant half of the human race - but this osprey may be thinking along exactly the same lines.

4 comments:

Feather Affair - DC said...

Glyn> the expectation of 'birds of a feather' taking up residence in the happy quest of starting a family - enjoy it while you can.

There's a very weird atmosphere at present around DC - like something is brewing on a Yellowstone super volcano scale. Maybe something to do with Iran. Israel and the US have been fine tuning/testing Israel's ballistic missile defense system.

"Putting 2 and 2 together", “something that is not (that) hard to do”; conjecture, but the atmosphere around DC is weirder than weird just now (not explained by the pirate/US captain hostage situation (which anyway is history)), but following on from Israel's January F16 strike (with F15/UAV backup) on two Iranian weapons convoys in (smuggling in parts of a large land to land missile that could be used by Hamas to hit the Israeli nuclear installation near Dimona (a ‘bright yellow line’) in which Iranian agents were killed and at a distance quite a bit greater than the Israeli/Iran IAF planned strikes; and following on from the joint US/Israeli testing of Israel’s Arrow antiballistic missile defense system, and the recent arrest of Hezbollah operatives in Egypt, the recent change of government in Israel to a more hawkish one, the recent comments by Gates et al that no one is expecting Israel to get a “green light” … it seems Obama is going to give said “green light”.

Obama and China have a ‘new understanding’ (post facto G20). No doubt Russia has one too.

The Osprey’s don’t come with conformal fuel tanks – IAF F16 and F15s do. Both F-birds are not stealthy; hence the window ahead of Iran’s expected deployment of S300 antiaircraft defense system. After S300 is deployed, and absent a backdoor to taking it out, Israel will likely have to wait for F35 JSF or a ‘loan’ of F22s from the Pentagon. The F35 is not ready, and Congress has blocked the IAF (Israeli Air Force) getting a batch of F22s (the production line for F22s is going to be shut down to meet Obama’s promise to China to get the budget overspend under control (re: recent ‘stimulus’ spending which has rattled China’s cage).

A lot is going on in DC right now, and I’m not talking about Charlie, the ‘first puppy’ of the White House.

Anonymous said...

That last paragraph could have read: "A lot is going on in DC right now, and I’m not talking about Charlie dropping certain packages about the White House (re: the ‘first puppy’)."

Anonymous said...

Gates is getting more agitated about a possible attack by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities ... never mind that Iran tried to smuggle in missile parts intended to give Hamas unprecedented hitting power against Israel. Iran's race for nukes is clearly going to weigh heavily on Obama's Presidency.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710700439&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

If Russia goes ahead with equipping Iran with the S-300 system Israel will be faced with a very hard decision. Hit Iran's nuke facilities with current non-stealthy IAF modified versions of the F16 Falcon and F15 eagle or coming up with an alternative means to take out Iran's nuke facilities once the S-300 is in place - and that will likely involve the use of non-conventional weapons. Perhaps Israel has a secret modified plane with high-output X-band radar capable of focusing the X-band source to fry the S300 radar thus rendering the S300 system obsolete. Who knows, but a canary?

Uuq (Element 114) said...

Israeli air force (IAF) is fine tuning for a short-notice attacks post two strikes on Iranian arms convoys in Sudan in January.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710718819&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

It seems likely that if Iran responds with unconventional weapons either directly or through proxies that Israel will have no real choice but to use ballistic missiles of its own - targets may include proxy sites outside Iran.

Why should this be necessary?

Iran has been "assisting" with the deployment of ballistic missiles with nerve-agent warheads outside Iran as evidenced by a recent ballistic missile warhead accident in Syria.

Iranian operatives in Syria who were "helping" to put a chemical nerve-agent warhead (VX) on a ballistic missile, the nerve agent leaked and killed Iranian technicians - in Syria, not Iran.

Output: Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria should avoid anti-Israeli military activity post IAF strikes on Iran to avoid powerful countermeasures that will come with a serious risk of horrific non-conventional technology against their military sites.

Footnote:
I mentioned on this blog a very weird expectant atmosphere emanating from Washington, DC (not weather related). It seems that there has been a tacit understanding that Israel will be expected to take out Iranian nuke sites out on short-notice (particularly post highly successful long-range IAF strikes on Iranian convoy(s) in the Sudan. It is kind of ‘funny’ to listen to ‘Pentagon Gates’ throw up a smoke-screen saying that strikes on Iran will only delay by three years Iranian deployment of nuclear tipped ballistic missiles. A very strange argument as it implies that Israel should delay Iran’s race to nuke missile deployment. Now we hear that Israel is ‘fine-tuning’ for short-notice attacks on Iranian nuke facilities. This is likely cover for IAF final preparations for actual attacks. All it will take will be a “flash-green” from DC and Iranian nuke facilities will be thrown back a few years. For some strange reason people think Israel has to grind Iran’s underground nuke facilities to dust – this is not the case at all. For example, such facilities generate a lot of heat from thousands of ultra-high speed centrifuges – the heat has to be dissipated. Take out the heat rejection systems and the centrifuge cascades have to be shut down.