Monthly Archives: December 2016

Birds, Butterflies and Blogging

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To be accurate the title really should be Birds and Blogging as there are no butterflies about, so if you have come here looking for butterflies I must apologise.

I’ve just been talking to a pair of birdwatchers who were going round the nature trail. The birds decided to cooperate for once and as we spoke we saw Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Chaffinches, a House Sparrow, a male Reed Bunting and a Robin. Two pairs of bullfinches and half a dozen fieldfares flew past too. That means I’ve seen as many bullfinches in a week as I normally see in a year.

They had seen Pied Wagtails, Bullfinches in the hedgerows and Linnets drinking from a puddle on the way round.

I filled the feeders in the middle of the morning and one of the Goldfinches refused to fly off until I was three feet away. It started trying to stare me down when I was about twelve feet away and almost growled at me…

They are much more aggressive than I realised. If it was five feet taller I really wouldn’t fancy my chances against it.

House Sparrow and Goldfinch on a feeder
Mistle Thrush
Greenfinch

Julia is having a day off. It’s the first day she’s missed in five years so I suppose I can allow it. She’s at the graduation of Number One son. He didn’t bother going to the ceremony when he graduated from his first degree but now he has a second he’s decided to go. The fact his girlfriend is graduating at the same time may have some bearing on his new-found eagerness for academic ceremonial.

Julia described the whole affair as “Like Hogwarts without the Sorting Hat.”

The dance rehearsals went well this morning, and the group has been producing friendship bracelets under instruction from Dave, our co-founder. Julia and Dave were working for Nottingham City council when she was told she had to re-apply for her job and he came to the end of a fixed term contract. Somehow this led to a discussion that became Quercus Community. I can’t complain because this turned out to be the best job in the world for the last five years. It doesn’t pay much, but I do have plenty of time for birds, butterflies and blogging. I also get to do things that don’t begin with “B” but I can’t be bothered to list them all. The range of words describing my activities over the last five years start with alpaca and end with zoology so it’s been interesting.

It’s Dave’s birthday soon and we’ve had cake to celebrate. He’s claiming to be “thirty next birthday” and everyone is nodding politely. I will make no comment.

As you can see from the photos, he threw himself fully into the choreography, though when I asked the group who was the problem in the Dreamcoat number they were unanimous in pointing him out.

Pointing out the problem
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Dance rehearsal

 

 

Christmas Decorations

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It was Tuesday so we went to a care home to make Christmas decorations. It’s not quite the jet-set lifestyle which my younger self anticipated, but it’s better than sitting in a bus shelter with a plastic bottle of cider.

We made garlands, table decorations and baskets. No doubt you are now stepping back, amazed, at the breadth of my talents, but that might be a bit premature if I’m honest. I have no talent for floral decoration, I merely have stronger fingers than the average lady of 80 years, so I can set things firmly in the oasis.

It’s actually amazing that two bin bags of garden cuttings (bay, rosemary and holly) and a box of dried poppy heads and statice harvested during the summer can do when added to a selection of second-hand baskets and willow hoops.

Fortunately, Julia and our neighbour Angela, do have some talent with floral decoration so it they made up for my deficiencies and the afternoon passed off without problem.

On the way there we drove through an industrial estate built near woodland, and saw a Jay on the footpath, which I’m always happy to see.

The way back was not so kind to us, with broken traffic lights and a traffic jam. A 30 minute journey took us an hour and a quarter. As I sat in the queue I couldn’t help thinking that life with a bottle of cider could well be less stressful…

 

 

A dull day in December

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I spent all day writing and organising photographs and I’m currently feeling like a lathe operator that’s spent all day producing nothing but a pile of shavings. The only difference is that the lathe operator would be able to use the shavings as pet bedding where I have no use at all for my pile of discarded verbiage.

Some days are like that.

The group, on the other hand, has had a very productive day, starting with feeding the poultry and doing the final climate measurement for the agroforestry scheme. After lunch they made bath bombs, did the paperwork for the Woodland Trust, redecorated the tree and played Indoor Balloon Ball. (Modesty prevents me telling you who won five matches on the trot, though if I tell you that Julia says I’m despicably over-competitive it might give you a clue. I beat her too.)

The downside with this is that I’m old, stiff, arthritic, uncoordinated and immobile, which tends to suggest that the level of competition wasn’t particularly high and that my afternoon isn’t going to make it onto any list of epic sporting contests.

As lunchtime approached the early promise of blue skies became, leaden and by just after lunch I couldn’t get a decent bird photo in the gloom. By 3pm it was raining and by 4pm it was as black as a taxman’s heart.

In other words, today’s photos are not very interesting, which is good in a way as it means they match the text.

That game again!
Making bath bombs
More bath bombs

 

Another day, another party…

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It’s not every day get to see a Christmas tree cake with a chocolate spanner but it was the Christmas Party For Men in Sheds on Friday and Julia had a special cake made for them.

Unfortunately, nobody had told them that the party was being doubled up with lunch for a tree-planting session and they turned up to find themselves tasked with setting up tables for twenty five. Frankly, I was surprised by the language.

I was also surprised by the table cloths, which explains why we couldn’t find them for the curry on Thursday.

Julia and I had been invited to the party as guests (me because I’m old and crochety and fit the Men in Sheds demographic, Julia because she’s the pin-up girl for the over-85’s).

However, at the curry lunch I’d been asked to do the cooking. Either there was a lack of planning or a cunning scheme to get the cooking done on the cheap. It could be either, because it’s not the first time I’ve fallen for it.

The “cooking” wasn’t onerous, though it did have to be trekked across the yard instead of served up in the centre. I just had to warm the pies and peas. Then warm the fruit pies. Then walk them across the yard.  Then raid the cafe stock to produce beans on toast for a vegetarian, because nobody had thought we might have a vegetarian come for lunch.

Steak and Ale pie from Maloney the prize-winning butcher
Fruit pies from th Co-op
Mushy peas

Lack of planning again…

Anyway, despite unpromising beginnings it turned out to be quite a good meal. The food was good and the vegetarian was a jolly young woman who was quite happy chatting to a bunch of elderly men.

Fortunately I like pie and peas and I love sitting round a table  complaining about young people and modern life, though the joke of the day (asking me if it was a busy time of year – ho, ho, ho) did start to wear a bit thin. Yes, I carry a bit of extra weight, and yes I have a whiteish beard but aconstant barrage of Santa jokes would challenge even the good humour of the fat man himself.

Serving up
Sitting down toChristmas lunch

 

 

Learn one new thing a day

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Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it before, but someone once told me that if you can learn one new thing a day you will become the wisest person in the world. As a result, I try to learn one or more new things a day. Despite this I can’t help feeling that I’m a long way from being the wisest person in the world. Part of the problem is that the more you know, the more you realise how much you don’t know.

I suppose that’s why they say ignorance is bliss.

On that subject, the farmer is currently showing round the people who will be taking over from us. There are seven days in the week but they need to meet on one of the days that we meet. Talk about rubbing it in. But as I said, ignorance is bliss.

As if that isn’t bad enough, they came and parked near the bird feeders and scared everything off. Humph!

However, back to knowledge.

Gemma wanted to know about baked beans and, as we encourage everyone to do, asked me to check it up on the computer. We covered haricot beans, Boston Baked Beans and Heinz Baked Beans, and during this tour of the net I noticed a link from one of the recipe pages.

The link is to the Boston Molasses Disaster. I’d never heard of it, but in 1919 it killed 21 people. From that page I went to the London Beer Flood. I’d never heard of that either, but in 1814 323,000 gallons of beer escaped from burst tanks, destroyed two houses and killed at least 8 people. I won’t spoil the surprise, so if you are intrigued by the names you can click the link.

Jayne playing at being a farmer
If tail lifts could talk this one would be saying “one at a time please”
Enjoying winter sun at the Ecocentre

The Farmer has now been loaded onto Dave’s van (the cardboard farmer, that is, not the breathing one) and he is off to school too. He was just too tall to fit in the car with Connie, and screwed together too tightly to allow us to dismantle the frame easily. That’s what happens when you ask a mixed group of artists and engineers to make a stand for a piece of cardboard.

Crafting for Christmas
Hard at work in the Ecocentre
Making the Quercus Christmas card

We filled the rest of the day with making Christmas cards and I am now, reluctantly, going across to the kitchen to make jam. I really don’t like using the kitchen these days, with all the politics and unpleasantness that it now involves, but it needs to be done and I have no choice…

Later: Jam making went well – it’s all set and washed up now. 🙂

 

 

Goodbye to Connie the Cow

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A sad morning today (though a less foggy day, as you can see from the photo), as we said goodbye to Connie the Cow. I know she’s going to a better place, where she’s going to star in panto and feature in educational units about fairy tales, but it’s the end of an era.

She’s been a group effort over the years. Julia drew her, John the Builder cut her out of ply, Dave made the udders, we all painted her (several times) and today we dismantled her and put her in the back of the car.

It was a mixed morning, as we were given a book of drawings and letters of thanks from the kids who came out on the last school trip (which just goes to show we’ve chosen a good home for Connie).

On a brighter note, the teacher who collected her showed us pictures of a Kingfisher on her phone. She’d been up to Rufford Park and on a bridge within yards of where I took the Marsh tit photo she saw a Kingfisher.

It’s slightly annoying that we missed the Kingfisher, but I’m looking forwards to looking for it on the return trip.

There’s always something good around the corner.

Dismantling Connie the Cow
How do you get a cow into a car?

 

 

The Marmalade Police and other stories…

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My first thought on waking this morning was “The Marmalade Police cars don’t have very impressive sirens.”

No, I’m not sure what it was about either. I think it probably stems from my thoughts on making Epiphany tarts for our Christmas party, and my concerns about not having enough colours of jam to do the job properly. The use of marmalade has crossed my mind, but I have reservations, despite the recipe provided in the link.

There is something wrong, according to my moral conserve compass about mixing jam and marmalade. I’m not sure where this comes from – I’m happy with jam and curd being used together for instance – but I’m conflicted. Where does it end? Bovril? Marmite? Chocolate spread?

Obviously this has resulted in a dream world in which fruit spreads have their own Conserve Constabulary for ensuring that they are used correctly. Or, more tongue-twistingly, its own Jam Gendarmerie.

Yes, I admit it doesn’t sound sane, but dreams are like that.

We were out on the farm today, so things were less exotic for the rest of the day. We saw a Buzzard walking on a ploughed field looking for worms, and a few more Fieldfares in the driveway. Couldn’t get shots of either. Buzzards really don’t measure up to my idea of majestic bird of prey.

Couldn’t get a shot of any bird at all during the morning, but I did manage to answer some emails, have a meeting and test a pork pie.

Finally, just after lunch I snapped a Long-tailed tit. We haven’t seen many this year and I missed some yesterday. It’s not a great shot but it was nice to get one, even if the dirty glass was messing with the autofocus. That was followed by some time with Men in Sheds and a go at emptying the polytunnel.

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Long tailed tit at the Ecocentre feeders

Finally, with the fog growing thicker, and swirling with menace, I had one more go before knocking off early. A Wren kept tormenting me by posing in clear view, only to vanish as I zoomed in. We had Starlings, Blue tits, Great tits and Greenfinches, plus a mob of Goldfinches.

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Mob of Goldfinches

Finally a small brown bird perched to feed. I zoomed in and took the shot, noticing a tiny red patch on the head. My first thought was Linnet, but I’ve been fooled by red-faced Goldfinches and bad light before. I have seen Linnets around, but not on the bird table, so it’s always likely one may drop in.

However, when I checked the photo I had a pleasant surprise: it’s a Redpoll.

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Redpoll on the Ecocentre feeder

It’s not super-rare, but I’ve not seen one on the farm before and I’ve never seen one on a bird table either. All in all it was a good end to the day.

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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Yes, we’ve cleared the board of the autumn display and put up some more Christmas decorations. We’ve signed a few Christmas cards the group are sending to other groups they belong to, hat making is under way and we all sniffed the Christmas cake this afternoon – it’s smelling good.

We put the Christmas tree up again. It looks like they had a private party at the weekend and knocked it over. No harm done but annoying all the same, particularly as they left a messy table and a strange smell in the air.

You may note that the tree is decorated with the remains of the saltdough animals we have been using for school visits – waste not, want not.

Apart from that I attended to the bird feeders, as noted in the previous post, wrote a post on kalettes for the other blog, put a goat back in the barn and lurked outside getting cold as I waited to photograph more birds. I came close to photographing a male bullfinch, but it was too quick for me. Apart from that there was little excitement until the table collapsed, flinging tea and telephones to the floor.

Paper flowers
Hat making the Quercus way
Our tree, with saltdough decorations

As we tried to clear the mess from the floor we were accompanied by wailing about phones. My reply (“That’s why we tell you not to bring phones and electrical equipment to the farm.”) didn’t go down too well. On the other hand, when you’re up to your ankles in tea and glitter you don’t want to know about phones, or hear the eternal “It wasn’t my fault.”.

Initially we were left with a mass of glitter in the joints between the floorboards but we managed to clear it out eventually. Well, Julia did. I lost interest and carried on writing about kalettes.

Great things kalettes, a proper old-fashioned cross between Brussels sprouts and kale (that is important as these days people tend to think any cross is a Frankenstein genetic modification job). It doesn’t need peeling,cooks quickly, tastes mild, is crammed full of goodness and looks decorative on the plate.

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Kalettes – new superfood or Emperor’s new greens?

 

Tuppence a bag

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If you’re familiar with Mary Poppins, you will probably recognise this quote from the song Feed the Birds. If you aren’t familiar with Mary Poppins then you won’t recognise it. At that point I’m not sure what to say. It’s not really my place to comment on your lack of cultural education, but if you get a chance to watch the film over Christmas, I hope you will do so. Apart from the more traditional aspects of Christmas, it is the season to watch films you wouldn’t normally watch during the rest of the year. It’s a Wonderful Life, Muppet Christmas Carol and The Great Escape – there’s an amnesty on watching films that have no place in the other 11 months of the year.

Anyway – from films to feeding birds.

When we arrived we had fieldfares on the verges. They flew into the hedges, startled by the car, and then flew into the field as I tried to get the camera trained on them. Most of the feeders were empty, as we hadn’t filled them since Wednesday. The large feeder still had food in it – the linseed and sunflower seeds from the mouse-infested bin. They hadn’t left it all, but they had definitely slowed down when they got to it, so I’m guessing that the smell of mouse urine puts birds off. It certainly puts me off.

The other problem food was the feeder with the rapeseed, which came from a sample we’d been given for Open Farm Sunday. It had been in the mouse bin but had been in a closed packet so didn’t smell. I’m wondering if there’s something about rapeseed that mice and birds don’t like.

Actually, there was a third problem – ice, cold and plastic water trays don’t mix. In other words, we broke the water dishes as we tried to get the ice out. Fortunately there are puddles to provide water (which made for an interesting few minutes of ice-breaking as we wondered who would be the first to fall over) and the birds have never used the water trays much anyway.

There wasn’t much action on the feeders, despite them being washed and filled with fresh seed.

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Dunnock and rosehips

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Blackbird at the Ecocentre

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Bullfinch at Screveton

I was particulalrly pleased to get the bullfinch, even though it’s a female blending in with the cover, because I heard the call behind me and was able to spot her in the hedge. It’s my first bullfinch photo, and the first time I’ve seen one so close to the centre – they are normally in the hedges up the lane.

The blackbird is one of our normal family with a few white feathers. I don’t know if the white feathers come back in the same place after moulting – if they do this must be a new generation as last year’s male had white in the wings.