Today Is...

 

Our anniversary. I've been on leave this week, which I normally do, the week of our anniversary. Often we will go away somewhere for a few days, but with my GF being ill, and money a little short we decided to pray for good weather, and go for a picnic lunch later in the day. Part of her illness means that she feels worse in the mornings than later in the day, so until picnic time arrives, and because it's our anniversary and it should be a day of leisure, I am sitting watching the birds in the garden, and also keeping an eye-out for our pond fish.

As you can see from the photo above we have a clan of starlings who are making for considerable entertainment at the moment. They haven't quite yet mastered the suet feeder, but their greed to eat the suet means that they are having to learn fast. A few days ago I watched one, with on leg of the feeder, and the other on top of a nearby post. A better image would be imagining someone trying to get into a boat that is not tied securely to the dock, slowly the boat moves away when one leg is in the boat and the other on the dock until...SPLASH. Well this is what was happening to the starling. Replace boat with suet feeder and you can probably see what was happening. The starling though, instead of putting both feet on either the feeder or the post, or even flying away, kept eating faster and faster. Eventually the gap became to great for him to maintain a grip and he drop off, fortunately remembering that he could fly before he hit the ground!

There seem to be more birds about in our garden generally now. When we brought the house, the previous owner told us all about the birds and how he used to feed them, but most of the first six months we were here we saw very little (and given it is the same six months of the year now, this is even more puzzling), anyhow that was then and this is now. We have our starling clowns, the goldfinchs that nested and raised at least three young (although we are certain that the dead one we found was one of theres'), as well as a whole range of other garden birds:

Dunnock,
House Sparrow,
Wood Pigeon,
Collared Dove,
Blue Tit,
Long-tailed tit,
Coal Tit,
Great Tit,
Carrion Crow,
Magpie,
Black-headed Gull,
Herring Gull,
Common Gull,
Sparrowhawk,

and other visitor who, whilst nice to see close up, even if he is a bit camera-shy, a Heron. He's the reason I am watching the pond, because we haven't seen any of our pond fish for a few days, but the Heron has been around. We know definitely he has had one of them, and also a frog, because he left behind the evidence, but what we are not certain about is whether he has had more / or whether we have any fish left. So I'm keeping an eye-out for them.

Anyway enough for now. Enjoy your day everyone, we will be picnicing later!