Tag Archives: 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.

New Beginnings

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The first thing I saw as I got out of the car in Peterborough last week was an unfamiliar bird in the band of woodland that runs near the house. It is actually separated from us by the width of a driveway and a cycle track. I had a good stare and it came back into view after a moment – a Green Woodpecker checking out the trunk of a tree. That’s one of the good things about autumn/winter, birds are easier to see in trees. They aren’t particularly rare but it’s always nice to see one. The yaffle call is distinctive, and that’s normally how you know they are about as you rarely see them when there are leaves on the trees.

Then the wind got up and the rain started. We had two nights with the leaks in the porch and conservatory roofs adding a musical accompaniment of plinks as they fell into bowls and buckets. Added to the banshee wail of the wind and the sound of raindrops on windows, this was not great. However, when Julia and my sister went for a walk on Sunday they were able to photograph a heron and an egret, despite having phones rather than cameras. Julia likes this so much that it completely outweighed the leaks/missing builder feelings she had experienced the day before.  The proximity of three tearooms (one at the steam railway station and two in the park) also helps with this.

My sister brought the makings of a cream tea for Sunday – one savoury, one sweet – plain scones, fruit scones, cream cheese, plum and blackberry jam, clotted cream, onion chutney. All from M&S. It ws a very enjoyable meal which we ate whilst discussing the herons and egrets.

Little Egret – Ferry Meadows

In the morning I had been round a military collectors’ fair. It was better than I had expected and I am thinking about standing it in the spring to get rid of some of my surplus items. I have plenty of collectable clutter and it might be a nicer way of getting rid of it than just sticking it in auction. I will be able to talk to people, meet other dealers and, hopefully, take some money.

Spoke to Number Two Son on Sunday night. He was given a custom-made couch by a contact of his partner. It was expensive and big and wouldn’t fit in the lift or up the stairs at the apartment block. There was nowhere to store it so they advertised it on the internet and sold it that night for $1,200. It had to be done instantly or the waste disposal people would have taken it next morning.

While they were doing that they noticed someone had dumped a couch. It was in great shape apart from a broken bracket holding up the back). Number Two Son and his neighbour (an engineer) fixed the bracket and he now has a new couch and $1,200. It’s good to see the dealer genes being passed on!

Green Woodpecker feeding on ants

Heron photo from Julia, egret from my sister and woodpecker is one of my old shots from the farm.

Buzzards in the snow

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Another trip to Peterborough and not a kite to be seen. There was only one kestrel and that was hunched on a lamp post by the side of the A52 pretending to be a buzzard.

I did manage to get three good views of buzzards.They were all pale forms and they were all puffed up against the cold. It must be a miserable existence being a bird in winter. One of the sightings was unusual because the bird was perching in a tree by the side of a flyover. As I drove past I actually had the strange experience of looking down on a perching buzzard – even if I was only looking down on it by a matter of inches.

It was a good day for magpies, hopping around on ground that was conveniently coloured black and white by melting snow.

Back at home I went through the back of a bird watching magazine, the section where they list all the rarities. Last month we went past a pond and saw a white heron-sized bird. Great white egret, I decided, though it’s nice to confirm there has been one about. I couldn’t see any news of one on the internet but the magazine report shows there were some sightings in Derbyshire, which will do for me. It also shows there were ring-necked parakeets seen in West Bridgford and Aspley, though we haven’t seen any recently.

Glad to say we’ll be starting back in a few days as I want to start getting things ready for the bird watch and the porridge day, and get my Christmas present into action. Yes, it will be all action once we get back…