Monthly Archives: July 2025

Birds, Blood and Butterflies

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Green Woodpecker feeding on ants

Julia walked out of the back door this afternoon with a jug of water to refill the bird bath. As she did, she disturbed a Green Woodpecker, which was foraging on the arid, tussocky wasteland we call a lawn.

When my parents lived here they saw one in the garden too, but they aren’t a species known for liking gardens and I had resigned myself to never being able to record one for the BTO Survey. We do have them nearby, in the belt of trees about 20 yards from the house, and we have seen them a couple of times (and heard them frequently), but, as I say, they don’t often visit gardens. Having said that, they are on the BTO list of commonly seen garden birds.

We could, if Julia hadn’t gone out with the water, have missed it completely. It is the 22nd species of bird we have seen in the garden since we moved in. I’m sure there are people with more impressive totals, but I’m quite impressed. It was a slow start and it needs some work to improve it a s a wildlife garden, so I am happy so far.

Kites fly over (we aren’t allowed to count them unless they land), there are sparrowhawks about in the area and there must be chaffinches and sparrows (someone has sparrows on their feeders about quarter of a mile away).  We’ve also had parakeets flying over. I’m hoping that with time we may eventually persuade them to land and allow us to record a few more types.

Green Woodpecker feeding on the floor

We had a cat yesterday, which is a new one for the Mammals list. This is not such an impressive list – Grey Squirrel, Brown Rat, Rabbit, Domestic Cat. It looks well fed so we are hoping it won’t do too much damage.

We also have ten species of butterfly recorded. I can definitely get a few more in with some extra planting.

We’ve also eaten our own beans, courgettes, tomatoes and rhubarb, which isn’t bad for a few pots. I had intended doing more, but I’ve had a very lazy year. We’ve also had some figs from a tree at Nene Valley Railway and one damson from our own tree. It seems not to have appreciated the move. Julia has also made Lavender bags from our Lavender, and is currently selling them to help with funding the cafe.

I had a blood test this morning and am still waiting for the result (it’s the one for the Warfarin, where they usually ring back in the afternoon. It’s getting a bit late, but I am trying not to worry.  The new surgery seems nice – it’s clean and the staff are friendly. The nurse was a bit stand-offish, but they often are. I imagine she will soon start telling me off for not looking after myself. Unfortunately, the impending phone call means I have to carry my phone about, and that, in turn, means that I will carelessly leave it somewhere random as I move around the house.  I will be back again on Friday – different blood test for different specialist. I am, so far, giving it an 8 out of 10.

Later, checking my emails, I am told the blood test result is not in.  Ah well . . .

Green Woodpecker shots are some I took on the farm.

Greenfinch

I Hear the Goldcrest Calling

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Goldcrest from Wikipedia

As I brushed my teeth this morning, I could hear a Goldcrest calling. It’s a high-pitched squeaky call, and not very attractive. It has the advantage of being easy to recognise, which is good for a partially deaf man with a poor ability to recognise bird song. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see it in the garden, but as we saw one several times yesterday it’s already recorded for the week.

I don’t have a photo of my own to use, as they flit about a lot and never seem to settle long enough to get more than a blur or a shaking twig. However, Wikipedia has come to the rescue.

For readers in the USA – the Golden Crowned Kinglet is very similar, possibly even the same species. No doubt a committee will one day sit and pontificate, and on deciding they are identical they will, as they have done so many times in recent years, rename our bird the Eurasian Golden Crowned Kinglet, because all European birds must, these days, be named in comparison to birds of the USA. If you think I bang on about the Cultural Imperialism of the USA in terms of spelling, just wait until I get going on bird names.

t was a good day for birds yesterday, with the Goldcrest, a Greenfinch, a Long-tailed Tit and a Wren. The Wren kept skittering along the fence, displaying its distinctive profile. After the breeding season birds tend to flock in mixed species groups. Scientists say it is mainly  about improved feeding efficiency ( as the birds share information of food sources) and protection against predators. The flock that visits us is 20-30 birds, which fills the garden, but is quite small in flock terms. It is mainly Blue Tits and Great Tits, with one or two others tagging along.

Goldfinches (adult and adolescent)

I didn’t have my camera and by the time I had gone to my study and returned with it, no birds. It’s always the way.

I tried the word study there, but I’m not sure it is quite right. It sounds too grand for a very small 3rd bedroom and implies a level of furnishing that I don’t have. I’m still sorting my newly assembled book cases and have a number of boxes piled on the floor. Office, writing room, spare bedroom (though that would be to confuse it with the real spare bedroom) or small room (which again, could be confusing to those using it as a euphemism for toilet). It is one of those unresolved issues. It could be a very small man cave, but it’s not really that exciting.  Any ideas?

I can’t remember what I meant to blog about, I just remember that it was going to start with the Goldcrest calling and then move on to something that seemed important. Then Julia called me through to breakfast, we started chatting about why you can get bread-makers, slow-cookers, rice boilers  and soup-makers but not porridge-makers, and gradually the thoughts dispersed and the birds replaced them.

 

Long[tailed Tits and Blue Tits at Budby Flash

I have also arranged my prescriptions with the local pharmacy and spoken to Rheumatology about moving to Peterborough so that’s a few things ticked off my list. (I add those bits as a piece of 21st Century lifestyle trivia to help the PhD student I imagine using this blog as source material in 2125). It’s going to be a funny old thesis that he writes – he’ll think we are all cyclists with bridge and bird fascinations, bibulous bibliophilic old buffers or grumpy old men, stretching from Aussie arctophiles in Ballarat to no-mates numismatists in Peterborough. If I’d moved a few more miles I’d be living in Bretton and that last sentence would have been much better. Or if I’d stayed in Nottingham.

Anyway, rambling over. I’ve just spent a couple of minutes trying to get rid of a phantom comma – turns out I need to clean the computer screen.

A Great Tit on the sunflower seed feeder – it only lasted six months before the squirrel managed to break it a variety of attacks.

 

 

Four Hours

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Feathers and Water

The day is slipping by. At 6.48, after one of those nighttime visits my age demands, I decided to go back to sleep. The postman woke me when a heavy parcel fell to the floor with an emphatic thud, and 8.02 I rose. After checking emails (nothing of interest) I answered my WP comments and looked up butterflies on websites. The USA has 750 species, Australia has 420, the UK has 55. I feel, yet again, that I am the poor relation.  Then I wrote a poem. It is now 9.58 and mid-morning approaches, signaling an end to what I always feel is my most productive time.

The “poem” that I wrote is far from complete, but it is a promising start. In human terms, I have the skeleton in place, and mostly in the right order. Some of the limbs have flesh on.  More a zombie than a human, and more a grotesque pile of words than a finished poem, but it’s a start. Every journey starts with a single step, every pearl with a grain of sand, and every poem begins when you put a few words together to form a thought or picture. They aren’t always the right words or in the right order, and they don’t always appear in the finished piece, but it’s a start. It’s already on its second title . . .

I’ve been worrying about my poetry recently.

View from Bangor Pier

it’s 10.22. I have eaten cereal and fruit, drunk tea and watched birds. At one point we had 16, possibly more. It’s difficult to tell when they are milling about and perching inside shrubs. It is a great advance from the handful we used to get when we moved in last winter. How much of teh change is due to a gradual build-up, and how much is due to seasonal changes, we don’t know. I will have to look up kaleidoscope in the dictionary.

Invented by a Scotsman, patented 1817, it seems to have been regarded as a serious bit of scientific kit in its day, rather than the child’s toy it became. See, I wanted to look up a word to use in writing about a whirling mass of birds, and ended up reading about Scotland, science and the Disruption of 1843. That’s where my time goes.

Another view from Bangor Pier

Back with my poetry thoughts, I’ve been worrying that I have become one of those poets I used to view with suspicion – friendly with editors, prolific and widely published. But have I written anything of merit, or have I just found myself a groove where I churn out the equivalent of greeting card verses for poetry magazines?

That’s something I will be thinking about over the next few weeks. For now, as the clock nears 11am, I will add tags and photos to this post and think about what comes next.

Coffee, sorting books and worrying about the direction of my creative life.  It is enough.

Pictures are from July 2019

Hoverflies on an orange poppy

Finches and Photographs

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Goldfinches on the feeder

It’s been a good week in the garden. We now have an established population of Goldfinches and when they aren’t on the feeders we can often hear them singing in the area. No wonder they were so popular as songbirds in Victorian times.

This morning we had a young one on the feeder, so they are even bringing the kids to meet us.  They are streaky and lack the facial markings of an adult.

Earlier in the week we had our first Greenfinch. They are grumpy-looking bird at the best of times and this one appeared to get even grumpier as it struggled to get out of the squirrel-proof feeder. They are bulkier than a Goldfinch and lack their dexterity. However, she (for I believe it is a female, judging by the plumage) seemed to get used to the feeder and was soon back in it.


Greenfinch struggling

Greenfinches have always been fairly common at previous feeding stations I have had but took a hit a few years ago after a virus swept through them.  That’s why we do a lot of feeder cleaning these days. Chaffinches were also affected, and despite them once being a very common bird we are yet to see one in the  garden.

I also had an acceptance. I had to wait a while for this one but it was worth it. I sent off nine submissions last month. All results are in now, seven successful, two not. Or, if you just count editors/magazines seven submissions and seven acceptances, as both the unsuccessful submissions were to magazines with editorial boards that accepted one of the forms I submitted but left another.

Even better,  two of the three haibun I had accepted had been rejected last month.  That’s what people say – rejection is only the opinion of one  editor on one particular day. However from seven out of nine to nought out of eight, is a very fine line. past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Greenfinch on the fence

I also got my new driving license today. The photograph takes years off me, as my beard is no longer white. It was definitely white when I took the picture. However, that’s the least of my worries, as I still look like a Balkan gangster. I wouldn’t mind if I looked like a high-level one, but I look like the sort of gangster who guards doors.

And finally, a Peacock butterfly sunning itself on the bungalow next door.

 

Summer pudding after the first slice

Julia made Ratatouille and Summer Pudding, which we had for tea tonight. Well, it was a form of Ratatouille. It included courgette and beans from the garden and a squash from the garden of a friend of my sister. That part of the meal was both fresh and low in food miles. The tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic and aubergines were less virtuous, but the it was a vegetarian meal, which is good for us.

The American spellchecker is playing up over courgette and aubergine. I suppose it will be happier with zucchini and eggplant.

Not content with trying to force spellings on me, the USA seems to be trying to manipulate my vocabulary. What a world we live in.

After the main course we had Summer Pudding. Black currants, red currants, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. We had blackberries in the freezer but she forgot they were there. It was excellent.

Meanwhile, having been let down by the chip shop a couple of weeks ago, I have been looking for pickled eggs in the supermarkets. They don’t seem to have them down here. I always knew there would be problems in moving south, but I hadn’t anticipated a pickled egg famine. They are available on the internet but the price (even with “free” delivery) is ruinous.

Tomorrow, I will be looking for a suitable jar. I already have all the ingredients apart from eggs, so will have to order some at the weekend.

Did you know that some vinegars contain gluten? It hadn’t occurred to me that malt vinegar, produced from barley, would have gluten, but it does. So does vinegar made from rye. That was another bit of learning – I hadn’t realised you could make vinegar from rye.

That’s about all for now.  Sorry I’m not more dynamic, but that is just the way it is.

A slice of Summer Pudding

Nettles, an Acceptance and a Funny Tern

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My piece on nettles has just been published on the research page of the Military History Group. It’s a fascinating subject, and after a couple of false starts I like to think I’ve done it justice. I will post it here in the next day or two. Its “family history” goes back about ten years – to the work I did on nettles when we were on the farm. This is the thing with knowledge when you are writing, it never wears out. It also goes to show that anything can be “military” if you try hard enough. From uniforms to parachutes and camouflage netting – but I suppose anything that existed in the 1914-45 period was involved in warlike purposes.

I had an acceptance last night. I still have three submissions out (and don’t have much hope for any of them) so it is time to get going. A lot more needs to be written in the next 14 days, and I  have nothing in reserve.  I tried writing poetry last night but couldn’t get to grips with it. I have a list of titles, and sometimes a few words of notes to go with them, but nothing that amounts to much.

That’s one of Julia’s pictures, of a tern. She struggled to frame it as they are so fast. They breed on artificial rafts moored in the lakes in the country park. I publish it here because it allows me to get a pun into the title.

I’ve also written an outline for Julia and her monthly piece in the Nene Valley Railway newsletter. She lacks faith in her abilities, so I knock her thoughts into shape and it gets her started. She has been taking pictures of dogs this month, with a view to writing up the cafe as a dog-friendly meeting place for dog walkers. They even give the dogs free biscuits. If they ever start giving humans free biscuits, I will be there.

She also spoke to a visiting Tasmanian while she was there and got enough information to do a profile. He also let her have photos of his sketchbook so she has some original artwork of the station. He is originally from the UK and was planning to visit family, including his father who, sadly, died just before he set off. His plan for this leg of the trip is to visit Staithes, as it has a rich artistic history. (though you have to read to the end of the linked article to find it). While I was looking that up, I looked at some of the pictures of Dame Laura Knight ( a Nottingham girl). She was an official  War Artist and I feel an article coming on. As I say, if you lived at the right time, everything is military.

Catching Up

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Sorry everyone, I’ve been neglecting you. When you combine the nappish nature of old age, the fatigue of recovery and the lack of sleep due to the hot nights, I seem to spend my life waking up in a chair and wondering where the last hour went. I looked for a library picture of an old man napping. Frankly, they were depressing.

We have had a real storm of butterflies in the garden, with a growing list of species, including white ones and little brown ones (precision has never been one of my strong points) and the birds continue to delight. We have had a family of blue tits visiting regularly, and using the bird bath, and the goldfinch contingent is growing in numbers. Not only do we have a few more on the feeders, but there are more in the air and they frequently sing from a perch on the TV aerial.

I have kept up my writing for the Numismatic Society Facebook page and done several pieces for the Peterborough Military History Group. What I’m not doing is writing poetry, or anything I might get paid for. I really need to earn some money to pay for the research sites and WordPress. What I do notice, with much of my writing now being 500-2,000 words long, I am now blasting through 500 words, where 250 used to seem like plenty.

I have recently been wondering if anyone has done an analysis of the people who use the different types of Social Media. WP users are obviously top of the pile, Facebook users are more varied, and at the bottom of the pile comes Quora. Yes, I’ve been on it again despite all I said. Amongst the gems and genii (there are a few) are people like a professor from an American University who tells me that all War Poets were British Army Officers of the First World War.

This is wrong. We also have non-British War poets, some women wrote war poetry, they weren’t all in the forces, Rupert Brooke was in the Royal Navy, they weren’t all from WW1 and they weren’t all officers.

However, leaving all that to one side, isn’t life unfair? I sit here, crushed by the weight of my own ignorance whilst a man in the USA, confident in the quality of his intellect, makes big money teaching despite his dangerous stupidity.

This is a German WW1 poster exhorting school children to collect nettles. They could be processed for their fibre in the same way as flax. The yield was less, but they grew wild.

Here’s a poem from Moina Michael, a very untypical war poet, according to the definition above. She wasn’t an officer, she wasn’t British. she never served in the Army and she wasn’t a man.

And with that, it’s time to go.

(I had planned to use Alan Seeger as my atypical war poet and quote Rendezvous with Death, but I was close to getting political as I mused on a scenario where he returned from the war, entered  politics and filled the White House with the Seeger family. Particularly Pete and Peggy.

That thought, I admit, cheered me immensely.

 

Days of Disappointment with Bright Spots

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Four days ago it was a doctor day, and I was hoping to be able to discontinue my daily visits to hospital.  From that point of view, it was a disappointing day. I had my cannula replaced (it was swelling badly), was told I had five more days of IV antibiotics, was given another seven days of oral antibiotics and had my hand wrapped up like a boxer’s as they have run out of good places to put cannulas. It seems that the antibiotics are quite aggressive as chemicals and the cannulas only last two days on average, before blocking/inflaming/hurting. I have had a couple last for three days and one last for three hours, so I am about average.

Cannula is Latin for “little reed”. This knowledge, unfortunately, seems to make them hurt more.

Peacock

I have had four poems accepted recently, bringing my score for the month to nine submissions, with five acceptances, one rejection and three still waiting for decisions. Things are going quite well in that direction, though I am fast running out of material, as I haven’t been writing much in the last few weeks. I’ve been finding it hard to keep up with some pretence of blogging, so poetry has been beyond me.

So far this year I have had 30 pieces accepted. It soon builds up. However, keeping it in perspective, some of them have only been three lines. It’s not like I’m writing Paradise Lost or The Wasteland. I’ve made 45 submissions and still have five decisions pending, so it’s not too bad. I’ve missed a few submissions because I haven’t been well, so if I work a bit harder I think 100 submissions is within my grasp.

I have recently amused myself by imagining the NHS under a government headed up by Nigel Farage. He’s against “foreigners” and would, I believe, stop letting them in to the UK to work. That would mean the department I was in would lose its cleaner, most of its nurses and all of its doctors. Two receptionists and three nurses (one of whom has a bad attitude) would remain, but are unlikely to keep the department running. Meanwhile, 90% of the patients are not only white British, but are, judging by the accents, Peterborough born and bred.

Red Kite

One of the doctors is from the Gulf and is in his first week in the UK. He loves the NHS, says we are lucky to have it, and is enjoying being here. He also added that he considered our current heatwave to be “winter temperatures”.  Sometimes it’s good to see what other people think of us and to count our blessings.

Julia and my sister are going out today. The Nene Valley Railway are running a postal special today and will be demonstrating sorting and picking up/dropping the mail sacks. They won’t, unfortunately, be able to use a steam train as they are suspending steam services until the hot weather stops, having already had several grass fires along the line. They will be catching a train from the local station to connect with Travelling Post Office. I suggested that we should watch Night Mail and learn the poem.

However, we had a cup of tea and watched Person of Interest instead.

We had a positive cloud of Peacocks on the buddleias during the week – well over 40. I’ve been doing butterfly counts but apart from the Peacocks we have had very little about – a few whites, a Red Admiral and a couple of Small Tortoiseshells.

Small Tortoiseshell

Birdwise, we have seen the wren and goldfinches more frequently and had a high count of 7 long-tailed tits one morning. We also had a record number of blue tits when ten immature birds appeared on the feeders. This coincided with a lack of cheeping from the nest that appears to be under the garage roof so we deduce that this is the family that hatched in the nest. We also had a kite down to about fifteen feet over the roof, a buzzard only 100 yards away and a flyover by 16 parakeets.

It’s all happening, but I am just too tired to photograph or appreciate it.

Pictures, I’m afraid, are just general pictures for illustrative purposes.