Adits and other holes

Today, whilst the pairs were being reasonably well looked after, I had a chance to catch up with the boys, and to determine whether the situation had improved for our lone female, Brownblack.  After a lot of traipsing about I determined that the boys look unlikely to pair up with our young lady.  At one point, after a break to explore one of the adits, the boys landed 8 feet up the slope from where I had emerged.  They then proceeded to get a bit jiggy with each other.  This made a fairly significant contribution to my deductions.

I did see her following them, at a distance, towards the end of the day.  But there was no significant interaction, and, unfortunately, no sign of the unringed chough seen in previous weeks.  ‘Unringed’ has apparently been spotted further up coast recently.

This part of Cornwall is littered with old mine related buildings and shafts.  I have an insatiable urge to look down every hole, or walk into every adit.  I can’t work out where this comes from, but given the slight feeling of disappointment I felt after exploring some adits today, I can only assume that, subconsciously, I had been hoping to find Mines of Moria style caverns backing away for miles underground.  Unfortunately, it seems our Cornish mining ancestors were less interested in creating Tolkien-esque underground chambers, and more interested in scraping out more for less.  Still, the leftover workings, stained walls and apparent maze like quality to the tunnels continue to leave me fascinated.