Tag Archives: birds

Old Men Doing Laundry, and other Sunday stories

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There live not three good men unhanged in England; and one of them is fat and grows old:

Henry IV Part 1

We had quite a collection of elderly gents at the Sunday Morning Laundry Club. Vikram, Flat Cap, The Farmer and the Fat Man were all there. I know they call me that because they always call the other fat man”The Other Fat Man”. I call him The Goth, though he isn’t really a Goth. He is quite tubby though. The Scrap Man and Tablecloths were absent, but it was a bit late for them. They normally come in first thing, to ensure they get a drier.

That was one of the things we discussed, people who use the driers without using the washers, thus clogging up the system. We also discussed Vikram’s health and that of his wife (she’s in hospital), the rising price of food, the iniquity of supermarkets, Buddhism, funerals, recent price rises on the driers and wives. Vikram is retired whilst The Farmer and I both have wives who work on Sunday. We’re not sure about Flat Cap. He’s clearly been trained (he brings his own hangers to put his dry shirts on) but he doesn’t wash any female clothes and never reveals details of any former marital status. The general view is that he has been married but, through carelessness or death, has lost his wife.

After that it was time for a bacon cob and a read of yesterday’s paper at the cafe down the road. Fluffy white cobs and nice thick bacon with a garnish of black pudding. Just add pepper and brown sauce for an excellent breakfast.

After a few minutes in the car I decided to give the Waxwings nother go. Result – no Waxwings but plenty of Redwings. There are still a few berries about, so there is still a chance of seeing some.

Redwing in Carrington
Interesting Mallard hybrid
The pond at Arnot Hill Park
Red Crested Pochard looks down its beak at an ordinary Pochard
Moorhen on thin ice

I thought I’d have a look in the park on my way to the shops, even if this did involve me in shopping at Sainsbury’s. They are only 200 yards from the park so it seemed silly to go to TESCOs after the park.

I saw some ducks, gathered more material for a polemic on the way people abuse open space/nature and took some poor photographs.

After that I shopped, cooked and picked Julia up from work. You can tell the days are getting longer because it’s light when she comes out now, where it was dark a month ago.

From the fact that I’m still writing Sunday’s post on Monday you can probably deduce that the rest of the day was taken up with my normal regime of chatting, snoozing, TV and reading.

We said we were going to have an easy January and that is one resolution I’m managing to keep.

 

 

A Walk in the Park

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I’ve been dragging myself out of bed recently, rather than springing into action with eagerness. Whether it’s the time of year, a lack of motivation or just a natural tendency to idleness I’m not quite sure. As spring approaches and removes the time of year as a factor things may become clearer.

The late start, when linked to a bit of paper work, some hoovering, lunch and several episodes of Four in a Bed meant that we didn’t get out until the light was beginning to fail. That meant we had go somewhere close for our walk, and the nearest place with ducks is Arnot Hill Park in Arnold.

I’ll leave a description of the park until later, when I can take some better photographs. There wasn’t much light and I didn’t want to waste valuable duck watching time by taking pictures of buildings. Birds move, but buildings tend to still be there when you go back later.

We started off with a light feed of sunflower hearts and attracted a reasonable selection – Mallards, some interesting cross-breeds, Coots, Moorhens, Tufted Duck and a Mandarin drake. I couldn’t get many decent shots because they were moving too fast for the camera.

At that point a man appeared and started feeding handfuls of food a few yards round the pond. We were still able to see the birds so it wasn’t a problem.

Then, with his partner and child, he moved round to the next bay. So did most of the birds.

It was a bit irritating, but we still had things to watch, and didn’t feel any need to attract every bird on the pond.

Bird feeding as a competitive sport
Sign – Arnot Hill Park, Arnold
Sign – Arnot Hill PArk, Arnold

Seemingly the man and family did seem to need to have all the birds to themselves. They worked their way round to a small beach and started shovelling food in by the handful. They also started throwing it on the path and attracting pigeons (something the signs specifically ask you not to do). Oh yes, I can be very attentive to detail when it suits me.

I’d never realised that bird feeding could be a competitive activity.

As things turned out it didn’t matter because we walked round to the other side of the pond and found a pair of Red Crested Pochard and a Grey Heron. The heron stood nice and still in a light area, but most other things weren’t so cooperative.

Heron at Arnot Hill Park
Heron at Arnot Hill Park
Grey Heron at Arnot Hill Park

I’m not as excited by these Red Crested Pochard as I was with the ones we say at Rutland Water last week. I like to think the ones last week had flown in from the Continent. The two today seemed as tame as the Mallards, so I’m pretty sure they are feral birds who must spend their time lurking round local ponds.

 

Reasons to be cheerful

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I’ve been working on my positivity, and I have many reasons to be cheerful. I have my health (well, most of it), I have my own gardening tools and I have plenty of room for books. I also have friends, a tolerant wife and a laptop.

What more could I want?

Well, I suppose the joints and bladder of youth would be handy, but I’d probably have to be ambitious and hard-working again, which isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Anyway, the joint aches started when I was still in my teens due to various accidents, so unless I’m prepared to set the clock back to 1968 and re-live the unpleasantness of my teens it’s not going to happen. In the absence of a time machine it’s not going to happen anyway, but you know what I mean.

That’s another thing to be cheerful about – I don’t have to go through all that teenage angst again.

Mainly, if I’m honest, I’m cheerful about having a digital camera. Compared the the old-fashioned film camera, which could hold thirty six exposures at a time, and where the film needed developing before you could see the results, the digital camera is cheap and efficient. I’m now able to take thirty six shots, instantly see the results and store hundreds of good shots on one small card. Due to the marvels of modern data storage I can also store thousands of poor shots – I really must learn to be more organised.

With a digital camera I can spend my time watchng birds, looking at old buildings and blogging. One day I will have to start earning a living again, but until that happens, I have plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

The pictures I’ve used here are just a selection of my favourites from the last few months.

Adjusting the lathe
Frying sausages
Nuthatce at Rufford Abbey
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Derelict factory in Stoke
Ciabatta with the shadow of rosemary
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Peppermint Creams – the finished article
Poppies and corn wreath

 

 

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

 

 

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.

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

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.

 

 

 

More Birds – Screveton and Sherwood Forest

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Here are photographs of more birds from last Wednesday, following up on the previous bird post and the Friday post.

The Goldfinches are acting like a bunch of thugs, quarrelling amongst themselves and driving other birds away. You wouldn’t think it to look at them, but they really can be very aggressive.

We had a flock of Long-tailed tits look in, but they perched in the surrounding trees calling to each other before deciding not to contest the feeders with the Goldfinches. We really need fat balls to tempt them, but after the Jackdaw [roblems earlier in the year I don’t really want to use fat balls again. I may try coconut halves filled with fat as they seemed to work well when we saw them at Sherwood Forest last Friday.

We have moved the second feeder from the back garden to see if we can ease the thuggery by spreading the birds out more. It has never been well used, even though it is situated close to a belt of trees that attracts quite a lot of birds. The ones that use the feeders tend to fly out of the trees and pass it on the way to the other feeder.

Birds can be very strange.

Male Chaffinch at Screveton
Greenfinch at the feeder
Goldfinch at Sreveton
Heron stalking the field margin

So far, after one day, very few birds have chosen to use the new feeding station, despite it only being five yards from the other.

It’s a tricky situation because we will have to stop feeding the birds at the end of the month when we leave the centre. We haven’t really started feeding properly since we let it tail off in late summer. They have had plenty of food in the fields and some of the food in the feeders had actually gone off because birds had stopped visiting.

I rushed into it last week, cleaning the feeders with a piece of stick and using food that had been stored in a bin for the last few months.  The bin had been chewed by mice and I had to evict several before I could get the food, which smelt very mousy. I’m not sure if this has a bearing on the lack of enthusiasm for some of the feeders.

We will wash the feeders on Monday and refill everything with freshly purchased food. I know I found the smell off-putting and I wouldn’t blame the birds for feeling the same way.

We will feed until we leave and will leave the remains of the food and ask the farm to feed after we have gone. It’s not ideal but it’s the best we can do. Meanwhile the group can continue to watch birds until we finish.

Practical note here – cheap plastic feeders buckle when subjected to boiling water. It may seem hygenic, but it’s annoying to hqve to buy new feeders so be careful. I’m going to use Milton. It works for babies, lambs and apple pressing so it whould work for bird feeders.

The following photographs were some we took in Sherwood Forest on Friday. I’m quite pleased with the shot of the acrobatic Robin eating from the coconut shell and the Nuthatch. I’d hoped we would see a Nuthatch and we did see several in the end, though they are difficult to photograph. Julia managed to get the best shots, much to my frustration. Most of mine looked like blue blurs.

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Coal Tit – Sherwood Forest

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Acrobatic Robin eating from coconut shell

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Great Tit feeding from coconut shell

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Nuthatch – Sherwood Forest

Christmas Cakes

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Today I made a special trip to the farm to wrap the Christmas cakes once they had cooled thoroughly. It proved to be worth it, as I saw the heron again and took some better shots.

I then took more bird photos of varying quality, answered emails, wasted my life looking things up on the internet and entertained two visitors. Even if you add in the housework, Cash and Carry trip and tonight’s cooking it still doesn’t seem much work for a day.

I keep saying I will prepare in advance and write a list of jobs, but I never do. This must change.

Meanwhile, here are some photos. One is of the cakes and the other of a heron in flight. It’s tricky taking a flying bird with no viewfinder.

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Flying heron

Birds at Rufford Abbey

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The walk started with me scanning the treetops for greenfinches, which were calling loudly, though they were quickly chased away by Fieldfares. I couldn’t get a decent photo because the twigs prevented the autofocus from working. That was followed by a photo of a blurred dot over the abbey as I failed to get a good shot of a circling buzzard. Bird photography is a bit trickier than buildings.

We decided to walk round the lake, a route which includes walking through woodland. The first birds we saw on the walk  were eating food someone had put out for them on a picnic table.  We saw blue tits, Great tits, chaffinches and (something I’d hoped to see) a Marsh Tit. I’m sure it was a Marsh Tit, though Willow Tits are very similar in appearance. In fact, Victorian ornithologists didn’t even know they were two species until 1897. The glossy cap and white stripe on the beak (which you can’t see on this photo) are good pointers to it being a Marsh Tit.

Marsh Tit – Rufford Abbey
Great tit – Rufford Abbey

 

Further round, we crossed several bridges and took pictures of Tufted Duck, Coot, Moorhen, Mallard and Black Headed Gulls, though the light wasn’t very good and they were mostly blurred. many of the gulls were in their 1st winter, as shown by the brown feathers amongst the grey and white. I find I have difficulty with autofocus on subjects with white bits – the Coots  all came out looking like the heads were blurred. I also had trouble with a Magpie and the heads of the Great Crested Grebes.

Small Lake – Rufford Abbey
Black-headede gull – 1st winterERA
Teasel – food source for goldfinches

 

On the main lake we saw Great-Crested Grebes in winter plumage and Greylag geese, finally walking round to the shop and tea room (where you can buy duck and goose food). We bought Bakewell tarts and tea, crumbling the pastry from the edge to feed the birds and provoking a minor riot.

Adult Black-headed gull – winter plumage
Great Crested Grebes on Rufford Lake
Greylag Geese
Bird feeding riot at Rufford Abbey
Mill race sluice at Rufford Abbey

 

When the boys were small (oh, how easily I fall into nostalgia mode) the Canada Geese were both numerous and aggressive, but these days there are only a few about, though they were quite aggressive in the pursuit of food from small children. There was also a small group of Egyptian Geese, which I always thought must have escaped from a collection somewhere. When I was searching for information for the link I found out they’ve been breeding in England for around 300 years, so it’s possible they might have been proper residents.

There also used to be a lot of rats around because people were over-feeding the birds. At one point the water by the tearoom used to be full of floating bread and the surroundings full of notices about not over-feeding. The current lack of notices suggests that people have become more sensible, as does the lack of rats.

You can currently buy duck and goose food from the shop for £3.50 a bag. Let’s say that at that price I’d rather be a seller than a buyer, as the bags don’t look very big. Next time I go I will take some of my own bird food. Once the cold weather takes hold the smaller birds will appreciate it, and are happy to comedown and feed. I may take a little bread too, but there really isn’t much danger of the ducks and geese going hungry.

The featured image is a Tufted duck – the white bits on his back are the water droplets from his recent dive.

 

Free seed and nature watch

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Julia had a quick word with the man we refer to as The Gamekeeper today.

Before you run away with the idea that we’re bankrolled by a rich farmer (as several local projects have stated),I’d better point out that we aren’t, and that we are very far from a sporting estate. Go somewhere like the Elveden Estate, as we did a while ago on our trip to Thetford, and you will see a big difference. Elveden is brilliant and clearly well-un and well-financed. You also have an immediate feeling for the generations of forelock tugging that have gone into making it what it is. No criticism, not (much) jealousy – it’s just like being in a different world compared to the chaos and cheese-paring that is my daily life.

Our shoot is run by a man who pays  to run a shoot on the land and, with a group of shoot volunteers, controls vermin, plants hedges and wildlife cover and does a variety of odd jobs around the place at weekends and in the evenings.

He’s more a nature warden than an old-fashioned type of gamekeeper, though he does make a hole in the magpie, fox and rabbits populations.

Considering that a fox killed 40 chickens in one night a few years ago, have trimmed the free range guinea fowl flock and ate Nelson the one-eyed cockerel not so long back, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with them. I wouldn’t like to exterminate them, I wouldn’t chase them to exhaustion and rip them to pieces with a pack of hounds but I don’t see that it’s my job to maintain the population by feeding them my poultry.

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Same with the rabbits – they are nice enough, but I’m not here to provide them with a banquet of salad every night.

Magpies – the jury is out. Some people think they are responsible for the decline in songbird species, some don’t.  They have certainly spread over the years, being common now in places I never saw them as a youthful birdwatcher. Like buzzards and curlews they were birds I only saw on holiday or visiting grandparents in the north-west.

Anyway, it was a fruitful conversation (to get back to the main subject) and he has offered us free bird seed for the winter, which is good.

He also told her that he saw a large group of young blue tits on the feeders a few nights ago, so at least someone has seen them since the nest box went quiet. We thought it was a bout time they went but weren’t quite sure. He also said he sees little owls at night – they roost on the rails of the fence that runs behind the feeder – something else to look out for!

Hatching egg report – we now have 5 so we are on stream to start hatching next Wednesday.