Tag Archives: Squirrel

How many Senior Moments can a man have?

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Looks like butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth

We had the Blackcap back again. The photos are different, as it’s on the seed feeder. They are, however, no improvement quality-wise. Anyway, that’s enough about Blackcaps, let’s talk about my new splint.

Blackcap again. Different feeder, same poor photo quality.

After self-diagnosing my wrist problem as carpal tunnel syndrome I ordered a splint from Amazon, It arrived today. It’s adjustable, it has velcro straps and a metal plate to hold the wrist in the right position. It’s a lot more comfortable than the tubular bandage I had been using for the last few days and, to be honest, much more impressive. It really looks like I have a serious injury instead of a sore wrist. The best bit, though, is the fact it doesn’t peel back as easily as the bandage, so I can’t roll it out of the way for washing up.

I did offer to remove it completely but Julia insists I keep it on, and she will do the washing up.

So my hand is less painful and I don’t have to do the washing up. It is the classic win-win situatio situation.

If I remove that arm with the hanging fat feeder it will be more difficult to gat to the seed

 

However, there is a cloud on the horizon – I’ve been having intermittent computer problems. New pages kept opening and I lost pages I was working on (though I found them all eventually). As I pondered on the problem it occurred to me that it always happened when I used the “t” key. Then it occurred to me that it might be something to do with the new splint and the “Ctrl” key, as I noticed drag against something from time to time. It’s still happening even now, though it’s less frequent now. That’s right, the splint was pressing on the key and “Ctrl T” is the command to open a new page. I didn’t know that. And even though I now know it, my hand is still dragging across the key and calling up a new page once in a while. It happened six times in the last paragraph even though I am trying to keep my hand up and the edge of the splint away from the  keys.

There is always something new to learn.

Dunnock – apparently a very promiscuous bird – you wouldn’t think it would you?

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.

Standing by the Sink

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Today I have been going through a plastic box containing odds and ends of spices. You know the sort of thing – the ones you used once for a specific recipe, or the ones you bought because you forgot that you already had some in the plastic box of spices you hardly ever think about. That’s why I have two lots of juniper berries and a jar of star anise.

I’m now in a quandary. Do I use them, even though they may have lost their flavour, to spice up a stew, or do I just cut my losses and throw them out? What I have done in the past is to find a recipe that uses some of them and then buy extra spices because the recipe needs them. At least I have learned to avoid that trap. That’s why recipes demanding nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger end up with mixed spice and black pepper. It’s not, I admit, the same, but it’s an attempt.

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

The good news is that I now have a number of useful jars to put things in.  Unfortunately I lack a selection of things to put in jars. Given time, I’m sure I can find some.

This is, of course, a well-known marketing trick. Mr Colman, of Colman’s Mustard used to say that he made his money from the mustard that people left on the side of their plate.

While I was washing up I was able to see a number of birds on the feeder, though a lot of time was taken up with the Big Squirrel. He struts round like he owns the place, but I have plans for him. Some of them involve the mixture of spices I have found in the bottom of the various jars I mentioned above. They may not be strong enough, or reliable enough,  for cookery, but I’m sure they are still pungent enough to disturb an animal with an acute sense of smell.

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

Yet One More Senior Moment

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Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

Today, in a massive senior moment, I made an even greater fool of myself than usual. Walking through to the front room with a plate of mustard mash with spring onions, mashed carrot and parsnip, brussels and haggis, I stumbled on a box we had carelessly left close to where I put my feet.

I had previously remarked on the fact that we needed to take care we put things during the move as I am not that steady on my feet. The stiffening of foot and ankle joints has robbed me of my former agility, and even in my prime nobody, let’s be honest, ever mistook me for a dancer.

Squirrel in a bin – Clitheroe Castle

 

So there I am, walking past a box with a plateful of squishy food in my hand, poised in mid anecdote. It’s not a picture that reflects credit on either our standards of housekeeping or my culinary efforts. Of course, I caught my foot. I shuffled, overbalanced and fell with all the grace of a giant redwood falling under the assault of a lumberjack. However, that was where the resemblance ended. There is some philosophical talk of whether or not a tree makes noise when nobody is there to hear it. Well, we don’t know about trees, but I can tell you that I make a noise when I fall. It’s a word that shouldn’t be used in polite company and it tails off towards the end.  Julia says it was one of the most plaintiff uses of the word she has ever heard, as I slowly toppled . . .

She was also much impressed by my grace as I twisted in mid-air and managed to place the plate on a chair before coming to rest on my elbows, also on the chair, with the plate of food three inches from my face.

Squirrel on bird table (and fly on squirrel)

I’m not sure how many times I have fallen now – but I’m lucky it’s still the sort of thing I can use as material for a post. Give it a few years and it won’t be quite so funny. However, give it a few years and I’ll have an electric mobility scooter and a whole new selection of ludicrous anecdotes of near disasters.

A man of limited attention span with arthritis and an electric mobility scooter, living next to a country park with miles of paths which are on the edges of old gravel pits . . .

What could possibly go wrong?

The header picture is our new squirrel, taken through the vertical blinds of our new kitchen. Not the most technically satisfactory picture, but I was afraid I might scare it if I moved to photograph it. The other pictures are a selection of my other squirrel photos.

Grey Squirrel

Coleridge, Clickbait and Capsicum Spray

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In a way, the title offers more than it delivers and, being deliberately sensationalist, is itself an example of clickbait.

I see it’s three days since I last posted. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what I’ve been doing in the last three says, because I don’t know. If pressed I would say that my main activity has been letting three days slip by. In Victorian times I could at least have excused myself by saying I’d been hitting the laudanum, but in these sanitised days of the 21st century it’s just been TV and reading clickbait on the computer. I can’t help thinking that my life as a poet is not quite on a level with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or even Dylan Thomas.

Talking of which, I recently discovered, to my confusion, that there was also a man called Samuel Coleridge Taylor. Life can be full of interest, but also very confusing. One thing that occurs to me, now that I know, was why didn’t I know? It seems an interesting bit of general knowledge that should have cropped up before now.

I’ve also been thinking about bears recently. They aren’t a problem in the UK because we don’t have any. We have reintroduced beaver as part of a re-wilding plan and accidently reintroduced wild boar, but that’s as far as it goes. We are trying to preserve wildcats too, but they are probably doomed in the long term as, even if we can prevent habitat loss, they keep interbreeding with domestic cats.

It will be harder making the case for lynx and wolves, and I’m sure that bears will definitely be a step too far. Someone was killed recently in Italy by a reintroduced bear, which is more serious than worries about wolves or lynx taking a few sheep.

Bears first came into my mind a few months ago when I read an article on the killing, and returned last night after I spoke to Number Two Son on the phone and Bear Spray came up. I’d seen it on Race Across the World and wanted to know if it was something he’d come across. It was. He’d carried a can while he was hiking last year. Life in Canada is much more adventurous than it is here. The biggest wild animal I generally see is a squirrel.

(It’s capsicum spray, which allows mw the three part alliteration I needed for the title.)

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

 

A Garden Visitor

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We sat and drank coffee from a flask before getting on with the serious work of the day. Today we had Jaffa cakes.

Look who came to sort through the woodchip, shortly after robbing the bird feeder.

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford
Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford
Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

 

Sometimes it’s good to stand and stare as a preparation for the day. The poem actually mentions squirrels, something which I’d actually forgotten since the last time I read it.

Then I went to work and started listing medallions. I was still at it when we packed up for the day.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Lots and lots of medallions…

Tonight, I expect, I will dream about medallions…

Street Furniture (2)

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I’ve been struggling for inspiration over the last week, though some days (such as the visit to Bakewell and day of the sunset) have been easier than others. Here are a few more pictures on the street furniture theme, following on from the first post of a few days ago. I’ve managed to fit in a post about a Senior Moment and 20 Questions since then.

Part of the problem has been a lack of photographs as I haven’t been getting about much. I also buried the camera a couple of days ago whilst decluttering. In the initial stages I seemed to do more cluttering…

The bin, which you may remember from a previous post, is quite dull, despite having a Litter section and a Recycling section, and I only took the picture because Julia spotted the squirrel.

The bin in the gallery below is from the village centre at Heckington – it was on the buried camera when I wanted it so didn’t get used when I wrote the last piece or the post about visiting the village.

 

The squirrel in the bin – Clitheroe
Bin at Heckington

There are ten waymarkers on the Pendle Witch Trail, with verses from Carol Ann Duffy. This one is in the grounds of Clitheroe Castle.

 

The Pendle Witch trail
Witch trail – poem

Next, we have more pillar boxes.

The Victorian one is in Stamford, the Edward VII in Orton Longueville, just outside Peterborough, and the one on the post is at Worston, at the foot of Pendle Hill. The final one is a George V box from the end of West View in Clitheroe – my family lived in West view in the time of George V and may well have used the box.

 

Victorian pillar box – Stamford
Edward VII pillar box – Orton Longueville

However, this doesn’t always work. If my family had lived in the village of Orton Longueville, just outside Peterborough, in the time of Edward VII (or Edward I of Scotland, as Tootlepedal will no doubt remind me) they would not have used that fine Edward VII  pillar box. It was only installed about 20 years ago, but they last a long time, and are often re-used.

Modern box – Worston
George V – Clitheroe

Strangely, if you type “Edward I of Scotland” into Google you get information about Edward I of England, who was known as the Hammer of the Scots. This is not very sensitive, and I am not at all amused by this. Naughty Google!

That, it appears, is why current post boxes in Scotland have the Scottish crown on them. When some were installed in Scotland with E II R on them they were vandalised (one actually being blown up) by people who objected to the cypher, as the current Queen was the first Queen Elizabeth of Scotland – or E I R.

As an aside, we had three kings called Edward before we had Edward I, as the English number kings from William I in 1066. We just don’t complain every time we have a new Edward, or blow up post boxes.

England and Scotland have had the same monarch since 1603, when Elizabeth I died and James VI of Scotland became James I of England. You’d have thought the Scots would have  let it go by now, but as P. G. Wodehouse said: “It is never difficult to distinguish between  a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”

Another Day Away

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We stayed in Skipton last night and spent the day doing some Family History photography.  The day was bright in patches, but by the middle of the afternoon, when we were at Clitheroe Castle, it was rather dark.

The trees in the main photo were an early find, while the sun was managing to break through.

The others are slightly less than sharp, but seemed too good not to use. Julia spotted the squirrel going through the bins as we left the castle.

Bin raiding squirrel at Clitheroe Castle.
Bin raiding squirrel at Clitheroe Castle.
Bin raiding squirrel at Clitheroe Castle.

There will be more on this trip later, but first I want to stick my feet up and have a cup of tea.

A Walk, a Weasel, but no Wren

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If I ever write a novel about Time Travel, and I’m not saying one way or the other, I’m going to need a way of making my protagonist travel in time. One way I’m considering is making him write a blog which gets behind, a bit like I often do, so that he trips over his metaphysical feet in trying to catch up.

It’s taken me three days to write about Monday, and nothing much happened on Monday. If it had been a day filled with incident I’d still be writing. As it is, I’m just about to start writing about Tuesday.

I loaded up the camera, put a handful of bird food in my pocket and set off round the lake at Rufford Abbey.

Mill on Rufford Lake
Rufford Abbey – footpath by the Lake
Silver Birch – Rufford Abbey

It was an interesting day and after taking nearly 300 shots I’ve already deleted over 100. The problem is that birds just don’t cooperate. They move too fast, they hide in shadows and they lurk behind twigs (which prevent the autofocus working).

At one time I did consider a post based on near misses – the blurred Goldcrest, the fence rail recently vacated by the Dunnock and the twig where the Wren had just been perching. Fortunately I had second thoughts, or this could have been one of my less popular posts.

Mute Swan – Rufford Abbey
Black-headed Gulls at Rufford
Squirrel at Rufford
Greylag geese under archway at Rufford

The best bit of the day was when I was photographing at the woodland bird tables, and fighting off squirrels. Suddenly there was a flurry in the leaves and the squirrels scattered, closely pursued by a weasel. I was too slow to get anywhere near it with the camera, but it was very funny, and what they deserved after stealing most of the food I put out.

Blue Tit
Great Tit
Grey Squirrel
Goldfinch
Dunnock
Grey Squirrel
Blue Tit
Nuthatch
Face Off
Magpie
Robin
Coal Tit

 

 

Birds in Sherwood Forest

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These are the bird photos from the trip to photograph the oaks in Sherwood Forest. It was a bit dull and the birds were quick (unlike the oaks) so they aren’t quite as sharp as I’d like. I missed a couple of Coal Tits that came down to feed, plus Blackbirds, Chaffinches and Dunnocks that lurked in the undergrowth. There were two pigeons too, but I ignored them as I don’t want to encourage them to steal food from small, cute birds.

Long Tailed Tit – Sherwood Forest
Blue Tit on feeder – Sherwood Forest
Nuthatch – Sherwood Forest
Great Tit on feeder – Sherwood Forest
Nuthatch – Sherwood Forest

It’s a lot better than Rufford from that point of virw, as there are more pigeons there, plus a lot of gulls which can polish off a handful of sunflower hearts like magic.

I filled three feeders in the car park and heard a clattering behind me, as birds started feeding before I’d got out of the way.

I need to work out a better way of doing this. Do I just fill one so I can stay focussed on it all the time, or do I fill six so they don’t chase each other away all the time? Even with six there were probably enough Great Tits to chase everything else off.

They were changing places so fast that once I pressed the button to take a Great Tit and ended up with a picture of a Nuthatch!  OK, my frozen fingers were moving quite slowly, which would have helped.

Marsh Tit in Sherwood Forest
Squirrel stealing bird food
Robin of Sherwood

I presume the cold was one of the reasons they were feeding so eagerly.