Tuesday 21 July 2009

soft rain

well.. after a maddeningly annoyingly laddy stag do in Gran Canaria I return to the rain soaked England! To be honest I welcomed it after the 32C heat of the Canaries.

Squirrel nutkins has all but destroyed most of the plastic ports on the 10 port feeder we have. Hes chewed them into about 5 separate pieces each! Ive glued them back in for now and ordered a Droll Yankee 6 port Heritage collection metal port job which should be here in a few days!

It looks like the bird numbers are building up again.. Kerry reports seeing the Greenfinches back, both flocks of Goldies with their babies totalling 11 individuals, the nuthatch and baby all being regular visitors.

Today we've seen a few goldies and a few blue tits, but the most common visitor today in this soft rain was the Nuthatch family.. the juvenile seems slightly yellower in the body than the adult who is more cream coloured. Its lovely to see them though, especially so often.. maybe 5 visits just while we were watching.

Ordered a rain guard for the new feeder that will hopefully act as a sort of squirrel baffle as well.. I wont order a Droll Yankee spill tray as a fixed one provides a perfect perch for the pigeons, so Ill put my clear tray under it suspended by a central hook, so that any large birds sitting on it cause it to tip.. it seems to work very well as the smaller birds arent heavy enough to move it.

Oh, I finally had a Terry Pratchett inspiration particle enter my brain and realised that our tree is a Smoke Bush Tree! Seems to bloody obvious now when you look at it in the wet.. all those water droplets on the fluffy flower heads! Anyway, its been driving me mad not being able to think what it is so all is now calm tranquillity in my brain.. other than the usual voices of course.

2 comments:

  1. welcome back to some proper weathere Matt.Nuthatches I would love.,so jealous
    Sheila

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  2. thanks Sheila :) Im so glad to be home I cant even say.. even to this weather!

    Dont know why the nuthatches are suddenly here, we had one adult a few times and I think hes bringing in his fledglings as its obviously a good feed spot. I read they stay in the area once they fledge, so hopefully numbers might increase even more

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