Projects

On Saturday, after our walk, we participated in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch, and here are our results:

Blackbirds - 7

Collared doves - 2

Greenfinches - 7

Robins - 1

Blue tits - 2

Dunnocks - 1

House sparrows - 7

Carrion crow - 1

Chaffinches - 2

Longtailed tits - 3

Woodpigeons - 1

Coal tits -1 

Great tits - 2

Wrens - 1

Compare this with last year's results and it looks pretty good. The only thing we didn't have from last year that I expected to have (since they still visit the garden) is goldfinches. We also have a couple of pairs of bullfinches which drop by every few days, and it would have been nice to see them, but ho hum... No magpies this year either, but that's no great loss since they are big bullies towards the little birds.


We are also going to participate in the Journey North Mystery Class, which I found out about via a lovely blog called Four Green Acres. She homeschools her daughters and this is one of the projects they take part in, and I thought it looked fascinating. Today is the first day we have to take readings. 


We'll let you know how it goes.

Frosty Saturday

Cod-Beck Reservoir, above Osmotherly

Ice on the water. We had such fun tossing things onto it!

Thick frost on the other bank

 


 

Where sheep may safely graze

Just before one of them got a welly-full of water...

Just after the welly-water incident. Guess who it was...

Doing the RSPB's Big Garden-bird Watch

Promises

It's been a lot warmer recently, despite some serious overnight frost, and we are starting to see the consequences. There are bulb spikes appearing all over the place - yippee! Pots that have been buried in snow, crushed into submission and completely neglected all winter are sending up green shoots. Under the skeletons of the roses there are tiny chive shoots and snow-drop spikes. It is very exciting. We have rounded the corner, we are in the home stretch. It is winter-spring and soon it will be genuinely, truly SPRING, which is always worth celebrating! 

We are looking forward to rhubarb, to snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, tulips, snakeshead fritillaries, to apple blossom and cherry blossom, to new leaves and warm sunshine, to playing barefoot in the garden in a carpet of daisies and dandelions, to planting beans and peas and peppers and tomatoes and sunflowers...

It's going to be a good year. I can tell.

What are you looking forward to?

Christmas visitors

Other than the usual suspects of friends and relatives including batman, a dinosaur, a Great Uncle and a Grandad...

 

we have also had some more unusual visitors over the 'holiday period'.

A Water rail!

Can you spot the hiding bird?

 

Can you see him now?

And then there was the flock of waxwings that swooped in and stripped the bushes just outside of the garden of their rosehips.

 
 Thanks to the RSPB's bird identifier for helping us figure out what we were looking at!



 









 Pip got a book on stop-motion animation so there have been some disturbing things happening to little modelling-clay men...
 

We also went to London to visit some friends and to see the Egyptian Book of the Dead at the British Museum, which was very cool. No pictures, not allowed to take any, and don't want to pinch from their website, but go and see the link, and go to the exhibition if you can!

Sorry about the terrible formatting on this post. I have tried and tried to make things go where I want but they have been flatly refusing and I have had to throw up my hands in defeat.