Tag Archives: Magpies

Working in the garden

Julia needed a willing workhorse this morning. When she couldn’t find one she had to do with a mithering fatman.

The task was sawing pallets up to make garden benches. Julia has a video on how to make a bench from a single pallet. Unfortunately our pallets aren’t the same size as the ones in the video (8 slats instead of 9) so there’s an element of mix and match involved.

There are some excellent benches on show, but we’re aiming for functionality rather than upholstery.

I will take some photographs when we get one together. With no electricity and a blunt hand saw, this might take some time. The fact I’m not allowed to be an official volunteer isn’t actually helping either. It also doesn’t help when you have to evict a family of magpies before starting. We aren’t sure why they like it in the polytunnel but the first job of the day is always to chase four protesting magpies out. Over the years we had a few birds in the polytunnels on the farm, but never anything like this.

Fruit and flowers were looking good, and the rain stopped for a while.

 

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…

There are some days when a single “Oh dear” just won’t do.

I won’t burden you with a list of minor annoyances, but I do want to share one.

On leaving the house this lunchtime to search for Waxwings I saw a big flock of Magpies gathering in the trees at the end of the street. There were around 25 in the treetops and another 15 or so swooped in as we watched, making a total of 40, which is the most Magpies I’ve ever seen at one time. I had my camera with me, so managed to get a few shots.

You won’t be able to see proof of this because the SD card from my camera has selected this moment to start playing up.

I’ve been meaning to back it up for a while.

I suspect that the good intentions that pave the road to Hell often start with “I’ve been meaning to…”

There were no Waxwings, just to add insult to injury, though there were around 20 Redwings and 30 Feral Pigeons.

Those pictures are refusing to cooperate too.

Actually, I’ve just managed to download the contents of the corrupted drive and download the shots. They aren’t that good, but it’s nice to have a few photos for the post.

It’s also been a valuable lesson.