Tag Archives: Coal Tit

Pixelated Pottering

Great Tit

It started well. I woke, blinked in the dawn light and found that I was fully functional, which isn’t always the case in the morning. Up, wash, clean teeth, on to the computer. Answered a couple of emails, checked comments on WP and played that addictive game with the snakes made out of squares. I really must give it up. Ten or fifteen minutes soon melt away. By the time I finished, snarling at the screen, Julia was making breakfast. I did some filing and she called me through.

We had cereal, blueberries and sliced banana and toasted fruit bread. (Julia had been seized by the urge to bake yesterday. We watched the birds for a bit (saw a Jay for the second time since moving in and the first time since starting to record for the BTO Garden Bird Survey). Washed up.

Back in the office I began to prepare previously taken photographs to add to a couple of posts I am doing for the Numismatic Society. I also did the final edits for the posts and assembled the emails, putting text and photos together and putting them in the “Draft” box. One I then sent. The other will wait until next week. Then I went to the list of my Facebook publications and added the titles of the two new articles to the list (in italics). The other one in italics on the list, I turned to ordinary letters as it is now up on the page. In the file of FB articles I proceeded to put that one in the “Published” sub-folder and moved the two new ones from “Documents” to the file of articles awaiting publication.

Long-tailed Tit

Though it seems like a long time when you have to read the boring detail, it actually takes even longer to do than it does to describe.

A bit more filing, this time spending a little time on sorting things out, answer some more emails, chase some cubes around the screen, search for, and fail to find, a letter from the tax office, and it’s time for lunch. I haven’t even written a list of jobs to do yet and I’ve frittered away half a day on things of little importance.

With deadlines looming, I need to be writing poetry, not corresponding with insurance companies and people who sell lemon trees.

I made egg sandwiches for Julia using the leftover egg mayonnaise from last night and had cheese and tomato myself. We had Afternoon Tea yesterday with my sister, hence the large amount of sandwiches in our diet. We will be back to proper food tonight – sausage casserole.

Blue Tit

During lunch we saw a coal tit on the feeders. We haven’t seen one since before Christmas, so that’s another new one for the survey. I’m now back at the keyboard blogging about all the things I haven’t done, but as I close in on 500 words I really must get down to some useful work.

It was during lunch when I was complaining I didn’t seem to be able to get anything done and referring to “working” in the “office” that Julia pointed out that all I was doing was pixilated pottering in the spare room. She isn’t wrong, but it’s still a stinging criticism.

When this is loaded I am going to look for a sausage casserole recipe. And still no poetry written . . .

Little Egret

Sweet Potatoes, Pasties and Peas

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Great White Egret

We had a flock of tits pass by this afternoon, spending some time taking sunflower hearts from the feeder. A few took suet pellets, a few had a go at the fat balls. Nothing showed any interest in the nyger seed. In the past we have attracted a lot of birds – mainly goldfinches – with nyger seed so we will persist.

The passing flock was approximately six Great Tits, four Blue, two Coal Tits and a solitary Long-Tailed tit. It was nice to see, and the Coal Tit is another species for the list. They are lovely little birds. Meanwhile, the robins are still posturing. I may try another feeder at the far end of the garden to see if they can both feed.

Little Egret at Aldeburgh

I made crispy sweet potato fries today, as the recipes call them. They weren’t crispy, though they were close, and they weren’t fried. They were baked at 200° C and they were better than the usual floppy rubbish you get served when eating out, or when using frozen ones. We had them with cheese and onion pasties, red cabbage (yes, we have had plenty of that once I remembered it) and mange tout peas with mint.

I’m beginning to enjoy cooking again. Julia bought me a gingerbread kit and ingredients for Christmas and my sister bought me books of scone and afternoon tea recipes. The only thing that worries me is the expanding waistline.

Little Egret – Blacktoft Sands

It’s likely to be sweet potato soup tomorrow, using all the inconvenient off-cuts. They need to be roughly regular in shape to avoid burning all the thin and/or pointy bits. Crisp is good, burnt is less good.

Pictures are egrets. As a result of global warming they are becoming quite common in the east and midlands. It’s nice to see them, but I have mixed feelings about their spread.

More from Rufford Abbey

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Still catching up from yesterday. A mysterious glitch seemed to stop the photos loading, whilst still allowing me to upload the post. As I’m trying to post every day, it left me, at quarter to midnight, with the choice of posting something imperfect or posting nothing. That isn’t say that I don’t post imperfect pieces all the time (they are all capable of improvement) but yesterday’s was far from finished.

Greylag/Domestic Goose cross at Rufford Abbey

Wood Pigeon at Rufford CP

Canada Goose at Rufford CP

Dove at Rufford Abbey

Coot and nest on the Lake at Rufford Abbey

This post will mark my 70th consecutive day. It’s not much compared to the magnificent achievements of some people but it’s a considerable one for a man of my disorganised personal habits. The only fly in the ointment is that some days I know I’m writing rubbish just to tick off another day. I didn’t set out to be a blogger of great dignity and importance, but I do have standards, even if they are low.

I’m going to continue with daily posts as long as I can, but I’m going to improve the quality. Er…

Yes, exactly. What is quality in blogging?

I’m not sure. I tend to like the ones about people of a certain age who do a bit of pottering, and I also like the ones about nature, which could be because that’s a description of me and my life. In fiction terms I suppose you could say I’m looking for something character-driven. Or you could say I’m nosey. (I’m the sort of person who enjoys railway journeys because you can look into people’s back gardens).

I suppose I’m not really talking about quality, but more about what engages readers and makes for a popular blog. Quality, which tends to make me think about seriousness and maturity, is probably not the exact word to use.

What does anyone else think?

So, back to Rufford Abbey.

The first thing we found was that a bottle of gooseberry vinegar that emptied itself on the back seat of the car (where my jacket was conveniently placed to soak it up and save the upholstery).

We had a look at the lake, which seemed less populated than usual. I suppose they are all off doing spring things. Apart from the Great Crested Grebes. I’m sure they should be exhibiting some interesting courtship behavior but all they did was sit there and float.

I nearly managed a video of courting grebes two weeks ago but they didn’t try very hard and it just looked like two birds flapping. My attempted video of two Robins fighting wasn’t usable as they were both quick and in cover, though today’s Robin photo shows one of the combatants perching with its tail cocked as it keeps an eye on the interloper.

Robin – Ready for Action

Great Tit in the Woods at Rufford Abbey

Coal Tit in the woods at Rufford Abbey

Julia spotted the Kingfisher, which I missed completely, and we both saw a pair of nuthatches, a Marsh Tit and several Wrens, which also all eluded the camera. I did manage to get a shot of a Coal Tit and the Ice House. Ice Houses tend not to move when you take photographs.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Another day at Rufford Abbey

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We had a disappointing day at Attenborough Nature Reserve yesterday so we decided another trip to Rufford was in order. (I’ll write about it in a day or two when my good humour has re-established itself).

As usual, we have enough for two posts, so I’ll do the birds first. I started off with a sore knee after yesterday’s walk so we weren’t quite as ambitious as last time. We concentrated on the bridges by the lake and then looped back through the woods. There are bird tables at various points in the woods and we spent some time sitting quietly and watching.

I’m gaining in confidence after a decent flying Greenfinch photograph earlier in the week, so I was hoping to carry on the good work today.

The sitting quietly approach has worked wonders in the past when watching birds, but it can be difficult on a busy day.

It amazes me how many people think it’s appropriate to talk like a bugle whilst walking in the countryside. If I can hear them 25 yards away I don’t know what it must be like when you are walking next to them. It also amazes me the details people are prepared to broadcast about their lives, relationships and health.

Whatever happened to reticence?

As you can see from the Featured Image I found a Marsh Tit again. It’s tricky watching a bird table and snapping a shy bird when you only have a screen to work from. I ended up with a selection of shots featuring either blurs or emptiness. It all fell into place nicely when the Nuthatches arrived, but even then it wasn’t plain sailing as I managed several blurred shots and several with them facing away . Julia was away at the time so she missed them, though she did get back in time to see one pecking at a nut it had wedged in a crevice in a yew tree. Unfortunately it was too dark to get a shot.

Nuthatcs at Rufford Abbey

Nuthatce at Rufford Abbey

Nuthatches at Rufford Abbey

As you can see from the other shots we got two unusual birds on bird tables. Moorhens can be quite adventurous when feeding (as I found when they used to rob my bait box when I used to fish) but I’ve never seen them on a table before. Note that the squirrel has a fly on its back – what a photobomb!

Moorhen on bird table

Squirrel on bird table (and fly on squirrel)

Pheasant on bird table

Final shot is a Coal Tit – the best shot from about 20 I took of Coal Tits. You can’t see the distinctive white nape in this shot but in the ones where you can see all lack something else.

Coal Tit at Rufford Abbey

Julia got some good shots today too so I may use some of them later on.

We also saw Goosanders, Siskins and a (very distant) Kingfisher plus the usual suspects we saw on the last visit. The Goosander and Siskin pictures are poor and the Kingfisher was too far away.

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.

Coal Tit – Sherwood Forest

Acrobatic Robin eating from coconut shell

Great Tit feeding from coconut shell

Nuthatch – Sherwood Forest

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Life after the Care Farm