Tag Archives: jay

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

Another Bird Feeder Milestone

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I managed

Blackcap at the Garden Feeder

to get a half-decent Blackcap shot this morning. It was dull, the camera tried to use flash, then a Robin chased it off. But somehow I got a usable image. It’s a very distinctive bird to say that it’s basically grey.

As I started to type this, Julia called me through to see a Jay. I grabbed her camera (it is better than mine for this sort of thing because it has a rangefinder – mine only has a screen) and was lucky to get three shots of a Jay at the ground feeder.

Of course, the card was still in the computer. All I got was a message “No Card in Camera” when I reviewed what I had done.

I’m sure it will be back. And next time I will be ready. The bird feeders are already producing more than I could have hoped for – more species, more fun, more interest, more excitement and, of course, more frustration and more Senior Moments.

Little Egret – this wasn’t far away, but it may be over-ambitious to try to tempt it to the garden.

The squirrel was on the feeder first thing this morning, and things have got to the state where it merely looks at me disdainfully when I knock on the window.

One thing that helps it get to the seeds is the positioning of one of the arms on the main feeder pole. That will be moved. It may be enough to stop the raids on the seeds. However, experience suggests it won’t be.

I’m happy to let it feed on the bread and other scraps on the floor (which include apple, cabbage, stale scones and some old dried fruit), but I object to it taking loads of expensive seeds, spilling them on the floor and keeping the birds away. If anything, it does good work on the floor by making sure there is nothing left for rats, plus, as I’ve said before – squirrels are part of the garden wildlife, and quite interesting, so it is welcome, as long as it behaves.

A Peacock once turned up on the farm (seen here with guinea fowl) so you never know what might happen.

I’ve been observing its movements, and had isolated a number of places where I could put vaseline and chilli. Unfortunately, as the feeder becomes more popular, the birds are starting to perch there too, as they wait for a turn for the seeds. I don’t want to make a mess of their plumage so it looks like I’m going to have to postpone the use of the vaseline.

My next move, if the repositioning doesn’t work, will be mixing seed with spice and see if that keeps it away.

A Seasonal Jay and a Lost Coin

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We saw a Jay on the way to work yesterday. It swooped from trees by the side of the road, flew in front of us and dropped into a park on the other side of the road. They are both colourful and unobtrusive, being quite a shy bird. This is the time of year to see them as they collect acorns and stash them away for future use. It’s not the first time we have seen a Jay at that part of the journey as they live in the park, but they rarely show themselves..

This morning I had an acceptance for the revised haibun, which was good. I’m always slightly wary of edits, as I may have said in previous posts, but this one seemed to work out alright. I try to do what editors ask, as a second pair of eyes can often see what I don’t, and they are helping me for free. There are several possible pitfalls, but we seem to have avoided them.

The owner has been away for the last two days. It’s always relaxing, but it is also frustrating because we end up having to stop what we are doing to deal with customers. At that point you appreciate what he does in the course of the week. I am trying to get things loaded up on eBay but people keep ringing and visiting and generally stopping us working. I’m used to the phone calls because they are a normal part of my day, but I normally rely on him dealing with customers. It just goes to show what a finely balanced machine the shop really is.

It hasn’t helped that we’ve found it hard to locate a number of the things we have sold. Once you lose one coin in a coin shop it can be quite a performance finding it again and it can take several hours out of the day. It always annoys me when that happens because time is money, as they say, and if you spend an hour looking for a £6 coin there is no way you are going to make a profit. It’s one of those cases where spending five minutes on filing and labelling would pay for itself. Fortunately we are all as bad as each other when it comes to losing things so it doesn’t seem so bad.

British West Africa 1/10th of a Penny

Writing on Borrowed Time

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It’s been a productive morning already. It’s only 9.40am as I write and I have already packed the two orders and done various jobs using the shop computer. I have bought my lottery tickets online, done most of the weekly shopping and checked how Nottingham Outlaws are doing. They could be doing better from the results point of view but the club looks to be doing OK. Unfortunately I am not able to watch them these days as I work Saturdays. It’s strange how something that was once so important can slide away into obscurity.

We saw a Jay this morning on the way to work. It dropped from a tree at the edge of the park as we drove past, and stopped to drink from a puddle. Sadly it was just a fleeting glimpse, as they are pretty birds and always a pleasure to see.I’d be shy too, if my main contact with man was murderous gamekeepers and Victorian milliners looking for ghoulish hat decorations.

In the shop the saga of the missing gold coin still dominates, though I haven’t mentioned it in the blog so far. Someone with low feedback bought a gold coin for £500 on eBay last week then decided to return it. This is always annoying, as it’s often a case of buyer’s remorse rather than an actual fault with the coin. He has actually given three reasons for the return of the coin, all of which are demonstrably false. However, we allow returns to encourage buyer confidence. and as a result we get messed about. Sometimes it’s fair enough, as we aren’t always perfect, but mostly it isn’t.

At best, we will be out of pocket for the postage cost and the bit that always seems to be missing by the time eBay sorts out the refund. It’s something to do with VAT, though I can’t tell you what as tax isn’t one of my specialist subjects.

This, however, is insignificant compared to the loss of the coin. The Royal mail claim it was delivered at 10.20 am on Saturday. It wasn’t. We were in the shop at 10.20am and we had no post. The Post office don’t know where it is, eBay says we must issue the refund now, despite not having the coin. I used to be a great fan of the Royal Mail, but recently they have been offering a very poor service, whilst maintaining high prices and regular increases in the cost of their service. They are far from being the worst postal service in the world, but they are definitely in decline. However, they are not as bad as the various courier services which form the main competition.

Birds, birds, birds…

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Today will go down as The Day of Colourful Birds. Unfortunately I can’t use that as a title as I didn’t get any photos of them so it would be false advertising.

My first stop was Budby Flash – a small lake formed by mining subsidence in 2007. In fact it was my only stop. I didn’t have time for a long walk so that really cut out Rufford and Clumber, and I wanted somewhere with a bit more to it than the duck pond at Arnott Hill.

In addition, I thought it would be nice to go somewhere new. I’ve not actually been along the road since 2007 so I’ve never seen the flash.

I’ve looked flash up in the dictionary, but you have to search hard to find it. It took several dictionaries and when I eventually found it, it was 12th in the list of British nouns.

12. Yorkshire and Lancashire dialect

a pond, esp one produced as a consequence of subsidence

I know what a flash is, as I’ve seen several, but I thought I’d better look it up to be sure about it. When you write it in a blog you really need to check. As so often a Nottingham word is claimed for Yorkshire, as the boundaries for this sort of thing can be quite vague.

That, by the way, is why there is a drowned tree – it must have been growing by the side of the River Meden when the flash formed. A good day for ducks, but not so good for trees.

Budby Flash 2

Budby Flash 3

Budby Flash 1

The first thing I noticed was the feeding station, with fat balls and seeds in mesh bags. There was a reasonable flock of tits feeding (Great Tits, Blue Tits and a few Coal Tits) with a Robin and a Dunnock. The surprise of the morning was the Kingfisher.

I was standing on the bridge looking for ducks when a flash of blue shot out from the side of the bridge and flew away down the valley. There’s only one thing that shines that blue on a grey day, so though it wasn’t a great view it was most definitely a Kingfisher.

Robin – Budby Flash – Nottinghamshire

That was the highlight of the day.

On the way back a Jay flew down by the roadside and picked something up, probably an acorn, before flying off. That was a good view, though, as usual, I couldn’t get a photo.

Finally, feeding on a roundabout on the way home, a small flock of Fieldfares looked bright in the sunlight, despite being shades of grey and brown.

It’s built on seven hills

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I do not, of course refer to Rome, because that would be too simple, and too exotic. No, I refer to Sheffield. Unlike Rome, which is famous for culture, romance and Roman ruins, Sheffield is famous for cutlery, silver plate and Henderson’s Relish.

Now, I have to admit that I have never counted the hills in Sheffield and I rely on Number Two son for this information. However, I can say that wherever you go in the city you do seem to be on a hill or next to one, so I find the seven hills story easy to believe.

The reason for this digression from my normal tale of life on the farm is that after work on Monday night I took him back to Sheffield when I should have been blogging. It was a trip I didn’t mind making. Though it was nice to see him for a few days my wallet and the fridge both heaved a sigh of relief when he left.

There are no photographs of Sheffield, though I do have some from the farm.

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We had New College down to get some practice with animals, tried out a new unit on egg quality and spotted two male and one female Orange Tip, though (as usual) I couldn’t get a picture, and I finally got to grips with the new booking system. The old booking system had a major flaw, in that it wasn’t a system, so this is a great improvement. I felt quite virtuous for a few minutes.

On the trip to Sheffield we went through Chesterfield, a town famous for its twisted spire. Whilst by-passing the town non the A61, which is a bit of a concrete canyon at the lower end, we were surprised to see a Jay perched on a section of crash barrier by the roadside. It’s not the first bird I think of seeing in an urban environment but there were some trees and patches of waste land within a few hundred yards so I suppose it wasn’t too far away from its natural habitat.

I suppose the moral there is that you don’t always appreciate what is actually in the landscape as you drive down a dual carriageway.

Tuesday (or today, if you prefer) has passed quickly. Julia has painted the outside of the pigsaw and is making the tail. She also had a meeting about the kitchen extension. I passed my time pottering about and, whilst clearing out some old files, found a web-based Health and Safety course that I had forgotten all about. That took up most of the afternoon but if I hadn’t done that I’d only have frittered my time away searching the net for trivia.

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Alasdair and I filled the bird feeders last night at 3 pm. At 9.45 am, when we arrived this morning, the fat ball feeder in the hedge was empty (three balls gone in 18 hours!). I knew the jackdaws had found it, but they must have been working hard to eat three in that time. One more secure feeder in the back also came under Jackdaw attack this afternoon. It’s not just the quantity they eat but the way they drive the smaller birds away. I think we may have to stop feeding fat balls.

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Life after the Care Farm