The Elusive Woodpecker.

For weeks now, every morning, I have heard a woodpecker's rhythmic drumming somewhere in the trees across the valley and for weeks now I have been trying to catch a glimpse of it, so far, completely without success. It was driving me mad. It was if the bloody woodpecker was taunting me because no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find it. In fact I couldn't even pinpoint the general location because the sound echoes round the valley making it almost impossible to be sure which direction the drumming was coming from  ...... until yesterday. Yesterday, I managed to locate the general direction that the noise was coming from and even more exciting, I actually managed to spot where the woodpecker was!! I know!! So exciting. The sound was coming from a wooden pole with either telephone wires or electric cables going across the top of it. Frustratingly, the pole is a LONG way away and I don't have any binoculars so I ran off and grabbed my camera to see if I could snap a picture and zoom it in enough to see if I could get a peek at the bird. Sadly, by the time I got back the pecking had stopped and I'm guessing bird had gone so all I got was picture of an empty pole. 

This morning, while I was collecting some logs, I heard the pecking again and this time, I could actually see the bird. Having dashed back inside to grab my camera and zoomed it in as far as it would go, I was thrilled to be able to get a few shots of the pole with the bird still perched on the side of it.

This is how far away the pole is, it's the one on the hill.

And this is zoomed in a gazillion times with my camera and then zoomed in again with my computer software.

I think it's a greater spotted woodpecker because it has a reddish patch on it's stomach. 

Nest Building and My First Veg Plants of the Year

The sun is out, the sky is blue ...... there's a song in there somewhere ..... and the birds in my garden are busy building their nests. This morning I spotted the tiniest wren with a beak so full the poor thing could hardly move and at this time of year I do like to do my bit to help the birds make a lovely soft nest for their chicks so when I brush my animals, I carefully put the soft fur from the brush out on the gate post by the food I put out for them. I wedge it half under a rock to hold it in place and when the birds come to get their breakfast, they usually leave with a beak-full of soft fur to line their nests with. I love watching them. Not a brilliant picture I know but it was very bright this morning and I couldn't see a thing on the screen.

I have also now bought my first veg plants of this year. I have been giving some very careful consideration to what I'm going to grow this year because, as I live on my own, growing things like big lettuces and big cucumbers seems such a waste. I never manage to eat a whole lettuce but I absolutely hate to throw things away. So, I have come to the conclusion that growing things that I can harvest and freeze if there is a glut, like carrots and cabbage and cauli and stuff is fine but things like cucumbers, lettuce and easily perishable things need to be things that I can eat in one or two sittings, better yet, they need to be things that I can pick and eat as I need them.

So here are some of the things I'm hoping to grow this year.

Cut and come again salad leaves. 
Mini cucumbers
Perpetual spinach
Rainbow chard
Sugar snap peas

Dwarf French beans

Lots and Lots of tomatoes

Potatoes

Carrots

Shallots

Cauliflowers

Kale

Beetroot

Courgette

And whatever else I can squeeze into my little raised beds. I also like to grow things in big pots and tubs because I can stand them off the ground and keep some of the evil, plant munching slugs and snails away from them. I would also love to grow things like squashes and pumpkins but I don't really have all that much space so it's not something I have ever grown before. Anyway, here are the first of this years plants ..... some sugar snap peas. 

Will any of you be growing your own veg this year and if so what will you be growing? 

Trouble With My Tits!

At the moment, I'm sat at home resting a very swollen knee, which involves a lot of sitting on the sofa with my leg propped on a cushion and not much else. As a result, I have been very bored. So bored, in fact, that I have moved a chair over to the window and I have been snapping away at the birds on my gate posts with my zoom lens. Ahhhhhh I hear you say, a post about birds, not about boobs :-) Anyway, each morning, I put food out for them and I sit watching them as they hop excitedly around, rootling through the bird food to find the bits they like. Yesterday, on a whim, I rather rashly signed up to do the RSPB bird counting thingy at the end of January and as I was reading through the downloaded instruction booklet, it suddenly dawned on me that, other than the basics, like blackbirds, sparrows, robins and blue tits etc, I know virtually nothing about birds ..... a slight hiccup in my bird counting if I don't actually know what it is I'm counting so I decided to have a bit of a practice run. I uploaded the photos that I had taken over a couple of mornings and set about identifying them with the help of the RSPB bird identification page. I think (hopefully!!) I managed to identify a bullfinch, both male and female, a blue tit, a great tit, a robin, a chaffinch, a jay although he flew away before I managed to get a picture of him and a wren, although again, I didn't manage to get a picture of it. There were also a couple of other little birds that I couldn't quite seem to get the identification of. At first I though it was a great tit but it doesn't have the white blob on the top of it's head and so, after much internet searching and much close inspection of my pictures from as many angles as possible, it seems that the little birds are either willow tits or marsh tits. The only slight hiccup is that the only reliable way to tell which is which is either by seeing a small, pale grey spot on the beak of the marsh tit or by listening to them sing! Luckily, the mother of a friend of mine, who is a bit of a bird enthusiast, has informed me that she thinks it is a marsh tit. Sooooo, many thanks Jo's mum :-) you saved me from looking like even more of a lunatic than I usually do because I had come to the conclusion that the only way to listen to the bloomin' things sing, without disturbing them, was to listen through the letterbox. It would have been just my luck that a passing neighbour would have spotted me and thought I had finally flipped! I'm just very grateful that I didn't have to resort to sticking my ear through the letterbox.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the little blighters and some of the other birds I spotted. 

Please feel free to weigh in if you have any other theories about the species :-)

 Bullfinch ....hopefully?

 Marsh Tit .... probably 

 Great Tit ..... maybe, Female Bullfinch ...... possibly 

and 

another cute little birdy on the left of the photo that I can't remember .... Chaffinch but possibly not?? ...... you can see my dilemma :-)

(A massive thank you to Christine who has left a very helpful comment saying that the bird on the right is a male chaffinch and the one on the left is a female one .... many thanks Christine)

 Blue tit .... definitely .... phew

Robin .... positively ..... thank goodness :-)

On a much more exciting note, there has been a wonderful development since I last posted anything .......

I'm going to be a granny :-)

Baby ....... Absolutely, Positively, Definitely a Baby :-)

My eldest daughter and her husband are expecting their first baby, my first grandchild and my mum's first great grandchild ..... Haha mum, does it make you feel old? It does me slightly but then again, next month I will be reaching a BIG birthday age .... one with a zero on the end so I might need therapy!

I am so happy for them. The baby is due at the end of May and it's very exciting. 

Congratulations to you both XxX

The Birds In My Garden

This morning, as I was hanging the washing on the line before going off to the market, I happened to look up at the sky. Behind my house and pretty much all around are trees so as you can imagine, we have lots of birds. As I stood there, like a demented loon, taking in the lovely morning, a bird hopping up a telegraph pole across the road caught my eye. It was a Great Spotted Woodpecker. I know this because after it had flown away, giving me a flash of it's bright red backside as it went, I dashed inside and googled it! I was thrilled. I know we have woodpeckers around here because I hear them all the time while I'm in the garden, pecking away at the trees but it's the first time I have ever seen one. It really  made my day. It also got me thinking about all the birds we have around here and I have decided that I am going to try and keep a record of the birds I see. (I also watched "The Big Year" again recently so I'm a bit obsessed).

Picture Courtesy of RSPB

Anyway, from now on, I will be keeping a bit of a bloggy journal and posting each week about the birds I have seen in the area. First things first though, I will definitely need to buy a pair of binoculars! Maybe from a car boot sale or something because although a lot of the birds around here are quite big and easy to spot, like the woodpecker and jays and buzzards and things, some of them are much smaller and it would be a nightmare to try and identify them without a pair of binoculars (there is a teeny tiny wren that hops around outside my kitchen window and it's the smallest cutest thing you can imagine but trying to spot it on a tree a few hundred feet away would be almost impossible!!). Trouble is, I'm now straying a little further into nerd territory than usual but what the heck, most of the people who know think I'm a total geek anyway so nothing new there :-)

I'm not sure how successful I will be at photographing the birds. I only have a very basic camera so the pictures might just end up being a series of specks in the distance. Again, I guess I will just have to see what I can do but, if they are specks, I will find a nice colourful internet picture to go with the speck in the photo so at least I have a decent record of what I see. Anyway, here is bird number two from this morning although the pictures doesn't really show it's size. It's a Jay. The first time I saw one of these I was amazed at how big they are and as I said, the picture doesn't really show the size particularly well. Still, they are beautiful nevertheless. I'm sure if I had had the time this morning I could have spent ages out there looking for birds but in the five minutes I was out there these two were the ones that I saw. Anyway ....... watch this space.

Picture Courtesy of wildlifeupclose.co.uk