Tag Archives: Green woodpecker

Snapshot

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I decided to do three or four short posts today by way of a change. I did about 1,500 words last night, which now need editing, and I am looking for a change of pace.

It’s just after 7.00 and I have been watching a programme about canals. I like canals but I’m too rickety to start canal cruising now. I will have a short daydream tonight about how I should have started 30 years ago, then I will switch over to the lottery winner daydream.  If I win the lottery I can buy a luxury narrow boat and a crew to do all the work. Sounds like a workable system.

Julia is currently on some sort of technological miracle that allows various people to squawk at her, even though it’s several hours after the end of her working day. It’s going to be fun when she goes back to work if they all insist on ringing her in the evening too.

Time to start cooking now, but I’m not sure what to have.

We have some breaded chicken which I bought because I was fed up with high-quality healthy ingredients. It was cheap and, after eating the first half of the packet, it seems to be value for money. Didn’t cost much, tastes like eating a pan scourer.

There is also the remains of last week’s gammon joint, which has already provided two meals, and a large bag of ready cut stir-fry vegetables which have come with noodles and sauce as a special deal.

Then there are the ratatouille and baked potato options, the veggie curries and the stews…

So much food.

Decision time. Gammon wins, on the grounds that if I leave it too long it has the power to kill me. And it’s easy to throw some veg in the oven and walk away instead of fiddling about with loads of ingredients.

That’s 311 words, so it’s quite a long snapshot.

Photo is a Green Woodpecker from our farm days.

More from Yesterday

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First stop of the day was in the garden with Julia.  A Robin was singing its heart out, Goldfinches were flitting round the treetops, two Cormorants flew over and a Green Woodpecker was yaffling in the trees. (Later, the woodpecker would visit the garden and perch on top of the large polytunnel.)

It was too cool for insects, but we had a window to mend and various other things to do. The glass for the window is going to cost £24. We’d spend that if we had a meal while we were out, but when it has to come from fund-raising, and when you consider it was broken by the worst burglar in the world, it is extremely irksome.

I did manage to get a dragonfly picture.

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Common Darter
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At the end of the day, when I returned from Men in Sheds with the pieces of 16 nest boxes, there were a few more insects about, including a massive bee and a strange fly. The quality of photography was not good and I didn’t get much worth showing. The newly painted door has a frame now, and the planters have become white. The blue stripes are lengths of fabric from discarded blinds (skip-diving again) – it’s probably not a long-term solution but it saves paint.

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Have to get Julia to work now, will add ID notes later.

The dragonfly is a Common Darter.

The fly is some species of the sarcopaga family – flesh flies. You have to examine the genitalia closely to tell what exact species it is and, frankly, I don’t care enough to do that.

The bumblebee was massive. In pre-metric measurements it’s about the size of the end of my thumb. I could see it from 20 yards away. It’s probably a queen Buff-tailed Bumblebee.

New pictures on Individual Pages

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I’ve just put some new pictures up on the individual pages, if you want to see what people are up to. As you can see from the featured image, which shows us at lunch yesterday, life isn’t exactly hectic at the moment.

Julia fell over last night when we were tidying up and bruised her hip. I call it her hip, from a sense of delicacy. Wherever the bruise is sited, it is causing considerable discomfort when she sits, and a lesson in why it is bad to carry hard objects in your back pockets.

When I suggested that the blog needed a photograph of the bruise for documentary purposes she was most uncooperative.

I really think she doesn’t take my social media work seriously.

It’s been a reasonable day for birds, with a wren hiding somewhere round the compost bin and scolding me constantly as I was working with the poultry. I’ve also seen the brightest goldfinch I’ve ever seen, so I’m wondering if it has just completed its moult.

Apart from that the big event of the day has been the constant laughing call of a green woodpecker coming from the trees between us and the road. As usual in summer I can’t see it because of all the leaves, but I’ve been able to hear it for several hours. The call is supposed to be a sign of rain.

As the sky is grey and there is a damp feel to the air I’m sure the bird is right. I do hope so, because some of the vegetables are looking distinctly done in by the constant hot, dry weather.

Of course, it won’t suit the farmers…