Hobbies and Crafts

Vic had a check in a bird book....they could have been swifts!...:)

jude x

Maryanna Lol :-D :-D fancy murdering a stick!!!
My OH doesn't like frogs for the same reason, that they make him jump.

Jude, as Jane said, Maryanna saw swifts a week ago. I don't think we have ever seen swallows around here at all. Must ask T if he sees them at the golf club.

Jane, poor you. As I said the only way I could sleep at all when I had my cough was when I was sitting upright so I used to position myself (in the spare bed) on three pillows. When I slid down in my sleep I would then cough and wake up so had to start over again. As the only thing that stopped the cough was a hot drink I would take a small flask of hot water to bed and a fruit tea bag or squash and make myself a hot drink when I woke up coughing in the night. cough medicine was useless. Hope you can clear it soon.

LOL Maryanna.....Poor stick ;-).We get the occasional Slow Worm .I have to say I am not that keen ,but love to see them sunning themselves on a nice warm stone or rock :-D

Jude ,Maryanna has seen Swifts .Nothing here so far.But the heron did fly up from next doors' lake' and pass my bedroom window earlier.I haven't seen it in quite some time .
It is all looking fairly quiet on the bird front this morning.But I expect it will get busy again later on.

Off to buy a V shaped pillow to see if that will help me cough less.
Maryanna last night was a bad one :-S :-S.So that is where I am off now :-D

Morning eveyone:)

Vic saw Swallows yesterday flying over and around the Monnow Bridge (very old bridge over the river Wye into Wyesham..He thinks there were approx 8 birds:)xx

Anyone else seen them this year??

jude x

Hope you sleep better tonight Jane.

I had a bit of a reptillian disaster myself today, we have a few frogs in the garden, I am sorry to say, I can't bear them, don't really know why, they just give me the heebie jeebies, I'm afraid.. They will lurk though, in longer grass and plant pots and then jump out and frighten the you know what out of me. I don't know why they like my garden so much, we don't have a pond and neither do any of our neighbours. There is one in the old dog bowl outside the back door at the moment.

We also have slow worms in the garden, I don't mind them at all and although I always check before I cut the grass I must have missed one today. Poor little thing.

So, not such a good day today and not so sunny either.

M. :-(

Edit, OK so this is where you all see what a twit I am !!!!! I went to dispose of the body earlier, it had taken me all night to pluck up the courage to go near it, and discovered I had murdered a STICK......... I have never seen anything look more like a slow worm, other than a slow worm in my life. It even had a little pointy " head". Oh well it's probably why I am due to have an eye test. :-D. Sunny again but jolly chilly.

Poor little Frog Vera.Was it turps in the bucket?.I never seem to see frogs here .We had the occasional one when we had a pond.But sometimes I find a tiny newt (dead) outside our back door.Why they should be there I have no idea .I think I have had 3 over the last couple of years .Very small ,just about an inch or so.

I don't know if next doors dog is home .I haven't heard any barking today :-S.They aren't really the kind of people who I feel I can just knock on the door and ask :-S

Oh dear Jane, some people just don't seem to think do they? Hopefully the dog has got more brains than the owners and comes home safely. I hope too that you get a better night's sleep tonight.

We seem to be inundated with starlings and not much else at the moment.

The few roses that are in this garden are covered in greenfly. If that happened in our old house I just used to leave them and the bluetits cleared them very quickly. Well I've been leaving them here and no birds have been near them so that the greenfly are increasing like mad. I had to buy some bug killer spray today. I try to be a bit organic and don't like using sprays. I've found one based on natural ingredients that I hope will work.

Now for a sad little tale. While OH has been painting the fence he has had a bucket of liquid in the garden to put brushes in so they don't harden if he is taking a break. Tonight he emptied out the liquid and at the bottom was a large and rather beautiful, but very dead, frog. :-(

OH has now been told to keep the bucket just inside the door of the utility room or else...

Sleeping is the worst bit Ann :-S.Fine for a couple of hours and then a big session of hacking .Get back to sleep and then it happens again after a couple of hours and so on.it just makes you feel a wreck doesn't it :-| :-|.

The Robins seem to have been the main visitors on the feeder today.I'm wondering how many there are lol.There are at least 3 different ones.

My next door neighbours dog has gone AWOL It is a huge German Shepard called Kaiser .I hope to goodness he is ok and doesn't cause an accident .We are not far from the main A14 :-S.The trouble is they have not looked after the boundary fencing in their garden which must be a good acre or more,and so it is so easy for him to just 'get out'.It makes me so angry as they have had trouble before when they had a spaniel that went missing and it was found a couple of days later with it;s leg caught in a fence.it had to have it's leg amputated :-(.I feel like I am getting on my soap box now lol,but it makes my blood boil as they are so lacking in common sense ,as they are highly intelligent people but just got no idea when it comes to looking after their pets properly.This will be on my mind now all blooming night :-S

Are you managing to sleep Jane? I found I wa fine in the day until I went to bed.

I think Partridges are so funny.We get them down the lane opposite and they just don't have the sense to hop into the verge They just keep running straight on lol.I have followed a single one for a good 1/4 of a mile !!It's little legs going like the clappers.

Ann I am still coughing well :-S :-S :-S.I'm exhausted with it now,even though it is a lot better.

Not sure I have ever seen Partridge in the wild.

When we visit our daughter in the Lake District we have to drive along a narrow road with woodland either side and kamacaze pheasants.

Good bargain your basket Maryanna what size and what is it for (decorative or shopping???)

About three weeks time we will be stopping at Taunton Sainsburys for our morning coffee or lunch on our way down to Cornwall. :-D

A lovely day here though a bit chilly in the wind. Your basket sounds a bargain Maryanna.

Until I retired I worked for a small company in the middle of nowhere. I had to drive down narrow, twisty lanes and hope I wouldn't meet anything coming the other way - particularly a tractor or sugar beet lorry. Reversing in those conditions was never my strong point! At times it would be made worse by the partridges. They were usually in a flock and they would run down the lane ahead of the car. They would also walk about on the low roof of our building and it used to sound like a herd of elephants tap dancing overhead.

For all that, they are pretty birds and I grew quite fond of them

Gosh, another treat yesterday.

We went to Wellington which isn't too far from Taunton, is a lovely little town with some nice shops to mooch in, including a very good junk shop. Got a lovely basket in there for £1. A bargain !!! Lunch wasn't so exciting, a Gregg's sausage roll sitting on a bench.

We went there along the back roads and in a field with some sheep saw some very large Partridges. , I don't think I have seen them in the wild before. We are used to having kamikaze Pheasants throw them selves at the car wherever we go, ( there is one road nearby where I spend about four miles with my eyes closed - obviously not if I am driving !!!!) and we often see Grouse. There was one jumping up at our neighbours back door not long ago.

But apart from in Bird Gardens and such like I don't ever remember seeing a Partridge strutting about. I was surprised at how big they were, and a lovely silvery grey colour.

Jane, there was a stream we used to go to in the New Forest when I was a child, sounds like your one. We would quite offer see a kingfisher but like most places it became known to others and popular and the birds went away.

It was another blue sky day and looks good again today but there are a few clouds in the sky.

M.

LOL Vera.I would have loved to have seen you on that stool .I hope you had the lid down on the loo :-D

Maryanna ,your trip to Exmoor sounded idyllic .It reminds me very much of a place I went as a child on the edge of Dartmoor.There were huge stones in the stream that we used as stepping stones and rope swings attached to the trees .Unfortunately my Sister and I were too young and not allowed to swing across .But lots of fun was had by other children.

I have seen a Kingfisher twice in my life.Once was when we were in a holiday cottage in Suffolk and the back garden went down to the river.Someone had placed some thin long sticks in the river bank especially for the Kingfisher and one morning I was lucky enough to spot one.The other time was at Wicksteed Park by the river there,but if I had blinked I would have missed it.I just saw the flash of blue :-D

My window feeder is very busy right now :-D :-D

Sorry missed you maryanna. Sounds idyllic there at your picnic spot, how lovely. Pity you didn't see the kingfisher. I have never managed to see one :-(

I suppose things are further behind because it is more exposed but you got the benefit of late daffodils. :-)

:-D :-D Vera, a loo with a view (or not in your case). I expect the doves will build another nest, they are quite dopey birds and scatty when they build nests in stupid places.

We had a lovely peacock butterfly in the garden today. It was a bit sleepy so I am wondering if it was not long out of the Chrysalis . still another hint that summer is not far away thank goodness.

Today we went up onto Exmoor and took a picnic with us. Our favourite spot is by an ancient bridge over a lovely stream that runs through the valley with the open moor going steeply up on one side and Beech woods on the other.

Last time we went we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a. Kingfisher, not so lucky today but there were some children paddling in the stream a bit further along and they were making a bit of noise.

There were a lot of Pheasants around though, the plumage on the males was particularly bright and they certainly had a lot to say for themselves.

The plant life is much less forward than it is off the moor, the trees are only just starting to show signs of colour. Daffs in full flower and some very pretty little Winter Aconites in the stone walls. It was so hot though with not a cloud in a very deep blue sky.

One interesting thing we did see though was an Adder crossing a lane. They must be starting to wake up a bit with this heat. It was quite a big one about three foot long, lucky nobody had run him over.

Am now going to sit outside to see how many Swifts. I can spot.

M.

A little flock of starlings were around this morning, eating everything in sight. One or two sparrows have been on the seeds. They seem very fussy, picking which seeds they fancy and throwing the rest out.

My doves seem to have abandoned their nest., They are still around, sitting together in next door's tree or on the fence between us. I thought I would try and see if there is anything in the nest but there is only one window on that part of the house and that is in an en-suite in one of the bedrooms. So there I was, balanced on a tall stool, leaning right out of a velux window in the sloping roof and desperately trying not to fall in the loo! And I still couldn't see in to the nest :-|

Slight improvement, we've had a few sparrows as well as the doves feeding today.

So summer is on its way. Good oh!

Thank you Jane, the garden was just lawn when we moved here 22 years ago so we are quite oroud of it small though it is. :-)