The Birds and the BTH

Today, a little bit about where I'm working/studying. It's a place called Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, or BTH for short. For more info, see the webpage http://www.bth.se/eng which is in English. I have my own office, which is something I'm not used to. It's nothing special, but I will be spending most of my daylight hours here. A photo with part of the view out the window (another thing I'm not used to from work in Perth) is shown below.

A better view out the window is shown in this next photo. Unfortunately, I neglected to factor in the reflection from the window, so you can see a bit of the camera and me in it. Between the house and road is the Ronnebyån, which at its southern end connects into the Östersjön (Baltic Sea).

One of the main things you notice about Ronneby in Summer is the number of birds. Just in front of my office window there is a curved awning-type-thing which has quite a lot of bird droppings on it. During my first week here, I would watch the everyday activities of a baby seagull (fiskmås). It was so cute. The grey fledgling lived in a nest at the right-hand end of the awning and I used to watch it slide down the curve towards it. It was rather defenceless and there were times when groups of adult seagulls would land on the awning and squawk loudly, perhaps taunting the baby, which used to try to stay as small as possible in the corner. Unfortunately, since the Friday of my first week here, I have not seen the baby. Either it very quickly learned to fly, it moved home, or it died. With each passing day, I suspect more and more that the latter is the case.