Hobbies and Crafts

Evening all:o)

Bellblair....brilliant to see you back, look forward to those photo's, hope your well:o))

Tec......great to see though are'nt they. We had a jet wizz past quite low this afternoon, l did'nt even have a chance to get out of my chair!!
Poor Owl, praps he's old or really has a sore throat!! lol.... cats and dogs have them!
Now then, is your dogs name Lanto or Yanto....cause me thinks someone is taking the micky...lol....l thought l was being very good and remembered to call him Yanto:o)

Madoc friend Wolfie was out this afternoon on his own, owner shut the door and had'nt realised he was out, so he came to play with Madoc until they got back, l have some photo's of them pulling a toy apart!!! lol

Did some gardening today so the birds were abit annoyed to say the least, the collared doves came down onto the fence as soon as we sat down for a cuppa and once we had finished a nuthatch flew in.
The robin was straight onto the soil picking out the worms and a female blackbird sat on the fence telling me off:o)

Caz...what lovely memories, l would have loved to have seen that:o)
Take care.

jude:o)

Cooee....evening all :o))

Jill....it sounds very idylic where you are, are you South or North. The Hummingbirds must be amazing, my s i l lives in California and gets them,she watches them feed on the nectar feeders:o))

The past few days we have had a coupke of Jackdaws on the b/tables, we've heard them but not seen them until now, also the crow.

We visited our neighbours at the bottom of the garden on Wednesday, they have a while german shephard puppy (4 mths old), her name is Lisa and oh my gawd she is gorgeous, l took a photo so will get it on my blog asap!!

Nite nite

jude :o)

Hi Everyone,

I hope you and the birds have been enjoying this wonderful "Indian Summer" we are having.
Quite a lot of birds in my garden, nothing unusual as yet, but I am happy to see the sparrows, chaffinches etc, that visit every day. I have a pair of doves that sit on an arch ten feet in front of my kitchen window every morning, waiting for breakfast to appear.
Jude.......I would be very wary of those jackdaws if I were you. Maybe you will remember me ranting on about them on here before. I started with two visiting, now I can get about twenty. They sit up on the roof, waiting for me to fill the feeders, then down they come, causing chaos. Nothing else gets a lookin until I charge into the garden like a lunatic, waving my arms about. They fly away laughing........then come back.

Jude.....For the benefit of my English friends on here, I will in future spell my dogs name as YANTO. The Welsh spelling being Ianto, but it sounds like Yanto........( I knew I should have called him Spot) lol.
Pleased that Madoc has a friend, and the alsation puppy sounds great.

Enjoy the weather while it lasts,
Regards,
Tec.

Jude Tec's dog is Ianto pronounced Yanto, it looks like Lanto because you are confusing a capital I with an L.

here on the Dorset cliifs we have loads of swifts, no doubt because of all the flies and midges. We also saw a Kestral from the lounge window this morning and running around down below the window on th back of the cliff here there are hundreds of rabbits of all sizes, as we walk up fron the coastal path they all run and pop into various holes!!

I know these aren't wild birds ,but I visited the sub tropical gardens in Abbotsbury Dorset last week and have photos of Kookabura's (don't know how to spell that)lol and chinese gold crested pheasants.Not sure if that is the right name,but they were lovely and so tame.One of the Kookaburas had a dead baby chick in it's beak and was bashing it around on it's perch trying to break it down so it could be swallowed!!!!!!!!!!.It wasn't pleasant to watch but was fascinating.
Jude what is the blog that you have the photos on please?

Morning.....another lovely day here:o)

Tec and Ann....ok l get it now, sorry me thought you was taking the micky, which l did'nt mind, l was laughing, but l also know l'm abit thick some times..:o((

Jane.....l will pm you. Wwe saw a Golden something Pheasant in Alton in Derbyshire, l think l put a pic on the blog, we visited a Butterfly farm. They did'nt have a Kookabura eating a dead chick, but they did have a camen or a small crock eating one.

Tec...the jackdaws are usually around but for some reason they had disapeared for a while, although we could hear them, but have now started to come back into the garden, not too much of a prob at the moment.

We have about 15 sparrows again too and a pr of blackbirds, aswell as the usual 2 robins, a couple of starling, a pr of dunnocks ad about 12 c/doves, plus 3 or 4 w/pigeons. No one has seen the woodpeckers now for ages:o(

Bellblair...hope you are well today (she's been poorly):o) x
Jude :o)

More photo's on the blog:o)

jude:o) x

Jane, we have just come back from the Abbotsbury gardens, those Golden pheasants are so beautiful aren't they, wouldn't it be great to have them in your garden. \was there only one Kookaburra that is all I caould see, three years ago when we were here there were a lot more than that and they were really noisy. Did you walk to the view point to look out over the beach? I bet it will be a lovely walk when the magnolias are out. We are staying about 7 miles south of Abbotesbury.

Hi all, had a wonderful afternoon in the garden as the weather is beautiful. I had some new potatoes left over from a party on Saturday night, (I usually fry up leftovers, but these were well travelled !) So I chopped them up for the birds and put a few out. They love them, but before I put any more out there I hope I am not doing harm. Has anyone else put potatoes out ??
10 Goldfinches were sat on the television aerial waiting for me to put out the sunflower seeds and my little robin is here again...
Maggie
PS and edited...great photos on the blog Jude, thanks

Ann no we didn't go to the view point.It wasn't particulary clear that day.I loved the sound those golden pheasants make.
I hope you are having a great holiday.
PS I changed my name from Helen to Jane (as that is my real name)

I found a little baby finch this morning(green I think)it was dead on the seat just outside my back door.I wonder if it had flown into the window.Poor little thing.

Jane
Thats sad,we have birds still doing that to our windows even though we have those bird sticker things on the windows!!

jude:o(

We seem to get a lot of birds flying into our windows, mainly pigeons who leave the pattern of their body and wings on the glass but normally survive.
Found a dead smaller one over the weekend.

On another tack, the rain today has ben heavier than for months and months.
Over the hour and a half it took me to get home it found all the faults in my motorcycle gear and I had to change completely apart from my socks!
I don't know if the gear will dry out for the morning (must turn the trousers inside out).

Brian....we did'nt get any rain at all:o)))) gawd l do hope you get your trousers dry for the morning !! lol

We get patterns like that too, amazing are'nt they....you can see the legs and beak sometimes:o)

jude :o)

We saw a cormorant today and this morning from our window we are sure we saw some skylarks but they were too quick to really be sure.

Wow, what a sight this afternoon. Starlings on the telegraph wires, they do it each year at this time. The sound of them was amazing, so loud. There must have been at least 200. I would love to see them in flight as you see on the TV in their thousands. Has anyone else seen it ?
Took a few snaps, but the pics do not represent the sheer awe of it all.
Maggie

I heard something on TV the other day saying that pidgeons have a kind of powder on their feathers and that is what is left on the windows when they fly into them.It leaves their shape.A bit Ghostly!!

My son was stood outside the back door today chatting on his mobile and got hit on the head by a Walnut .Complete in it's outer covering.Some bird must have dropped it lol

I am finding a lot of empty egg shells on my lawn at the moment.I have a feeling it is the Magpies AGAIN .

Magnolia
I had an amazing experience one year in Germany.
There were lots of starlings about so we went to have a better look in a car park.
This was near a field and at first we couldn't see anything when all of a sudden a mass of starlings all rose out of the field into the sky together.
It wasn't the least bit scary quite the opposite and we have a lovely photograph.
Von

On our walk today we saw a chiff chaff, and, we think, a skylark and also a buzzard which was really close right over us. Unfortunately I couldn't get my camera out quickly enough to snap it and it flew off, obviously wasn't going to get any food while we were there.

Von if you have a good pic Jude will put it on her Blog.