Is it Spring Yet??

Wow, this is my 201st post on  my blog, I can't believe I had so much to write about :-)

There probably won't be many pictures on this post as I still have a really sore knee from a recurring ligament injury about 18 months ago and I haven't had much of a chance to get out and about. I'm sitting on the sofa watching mindless tv, my house is a mess, there are stacks of dishes in the sink that need loading into the dishwasher, the carpet is hairy because Indie is moulting all over the place and I'm grumpy because I have so much to do but I need to rest my stupid knee. I'm not very good at just sitting. I like to be doing something and there is plenty I should be doing. Still, never mind, I'm hoping that if I rest it a lot and take my pain killers, by next week it should be sorted enough to start doing stuff again. 

The weather has been crazy and all over the place this last week. One minute it's been 8 degrees and sunny like spring, the next it's minus 3 and I'm having to defrost the car before going out. The birds in my garden seem to be very happy that I'm feeding them, what with the unpredictable weather. They line up on the fence in the morning waiting for their breakfast, which made it very easy when I did my RSPB bird counting thingy this weekend. It was great fun and I will probably do it again next year. I did a lot of picture taking during the one hour slot so I could make sure that I was writing down the right birds. The trouble is, although I have a decent-ish zoom on my camera, without a tripod, which I don't have, it makes it hard to keep the camera still enough to get a decent picture. So, being ever-resourceful, I made my own stand so I could rest the camera on it to steady it enough to get a decent picture. 

If you promise not to laugh, I will show you what I used.

It's a table with a bag of cous cous on top of an upturned take-out tub on top of an upturned biscuit tin!!

Unconventional I know but it seemed to work. 

Ingenious ...... don't you think? 

I also got busy with my sewing machine last week and made some cute little bags for the market stall. I found the pattern on the internet, it was free and it is a really easy little bag to make. I did make it a bit bigger than the pattern though because I felt it was a bit small so I added an extra piece of about two inches into the pattern. 

I really like them and I hope they will prove to be a good seller on my stall. It's a difficult time of year at the market, there aren't many people around and the ones that do come to the market come for the veg and the eggs and the cakes. Unfortunately, the things on my stall don't sell very well at this time of year. I guess because people don't have much spare money after Christmas and with January being a long month and all that. 

On a much cheerier note, a friend posted this picture on my Facebook page and I thought it was very cute, although, to be honest, I don't need a starter kit, I'm already a fully paid-up member of the crazy cat lady club :-)

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

Thrifty Thursday

I recently watched a fabulous film called The Big Year. It's a gentle comedy with Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson as "birding" enthusiasts dashing off around America trying to see as many birds as they can in 1 year.

A couple of days later, inspired by the film, I was looking at bird feeding stations in my local garden centre. While they are lovely and stylish, they are also expensive and are basically just hook-shaped poles stuck in the ground. A few years ago, my very good friend Sharon (who has just started her blog here) bought me some lovely hanging tea-light lanterns for the garden. They each came with a hook-shaped pole to stick in the ground to hang the lanterns from. Unfortunately, two of the lanterns got broken but being the kind of person that finds it hard to throw anything away, I put the poles in the shed and forgot about them.

Anyway, yesterday morning, as I was looking out of my living room window, watching the birds hopping around in my garden and wondering what to do for this weeks Thrifty Thursday, I had a fabulous idea. Many many MANY years ago, when I was at primary school, I remembered making a yoghurt pot bird feeder using lard and berries and bird seed as part of a school nature week and Eureka ...... I knew exactly what I was going to make this week. I usually feed the birds everyday by putting out crumbs and seeds on my potting table, however, now that my next door neighbours cat thinks that my garden is hers, the birds seem to be a bit freaked out. I was considering changing to fat balls but they can work out quite expensive so yoghurt pot bird feeders are the perfect solution A quick visit to the shed to battle the giant spiders and hey presto ..... instant bird feeding poles.

Now, here's how to make the bird cake to go inside the yoghurt pots courtesy of the RSPB. They are perfect for kids to make but if you're using nuts take care in case of allergies. 

How to make a speedy bird cake

Make this quick and easy cake to keep the birds happy.

Stuff you need

Good quality bird seed; raisins; peanuts; grated cheese; suet or lard; yoghurt pots; string; mixing bowl; scissors

       

Steps

Carefully make a small hole in the bottom of a yoghurt pot. Thread string through the hole and tie a knot on the inside. Leave enough string so that you can tie the pot to a tree or your bird table.

Allow the lard to warm up to room temperature, but don’t melt it. Then cut it up into small pieces and put it in the mixing bowl.

Add the other ingredients to the bowl and mix them together with your finger tips. Keep adding the seed/raisin/cheese mixture and squidging it until the fat holds it all together.

Fill your yoghurt pots with bird cake mixture and put them in the fridge to set for an hour or so.

Hang your speedy bird cakes from trees or your bird table. Watch for greenfinches, tits and possibly even great spotted woodpeckers.