Category: Birds

Kes – 23 July 2016

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23 July bOur visitors arrived much later last night than we expected, just before 11pm, in fact.  Drink was taken, tales were told, jokes were laughed at and much later than normal, we got to bed.

This morning they were up fairly early and we were up soon after although my head felt a bit thick.  That was when our other visitor dropped in.  Scamp said there was a bird sitting outside the front door, not a little bird, she thought it was a pigeon and it wasn’t looking too well.  Murd said two big black birds had ‘had a word with it’ and it perked up a bit after that.  He said he thought they must have been doctors 🙂

When I opened the front door I saw, not a dead pigeon as I expected, but an apparently live but unmoving kestrel.  It was a bit battered and its eyes were closed, so I feared the worst.  Then its head moved, so it was probably just dazed.  Maybe after hitting the bedroom window and falling on to the grass in the front garden.  I put on a pair of Scamp’s gardening gloves because that beak looked sharp, and gently lifted it up.  Some of the feathers on one wing were splayed out, but other than that it looked ok.  I pulled out a bit of dried grass from its wing feathers and smoothed the wing down. That was when it opened its eyes.  Wow!  Such beautiful, bright yellow eyes.  It looked at me, shook itself staggered a bit then flew off across the road and landed in a tree.  I think it must have been a young bird.  Lovely chestnut coloured plumage, and oh, those eyes.  A great start to the day, and my thick head had gone.

Scamp drove us in to Stirling today and we went for a curry in the usual restaurant, we both had our usual starters and mains too.  Creatures of habit.  Afterwards I went to the bookshop and was intrigued by the title of one book:
“The Genius of Birds” by Jennifer Ackerman.
I wonder why that one caught my eye.  Managed to download it when I got home and will add it to my Kindle booklist tonight.  We both wandered round BHS which was closing today, looking for bargains, but there were none, just junk nobody wanted.

After that we went to Waitrose and I got a big lump of ribeye which I cut into five steaks when I got home.  That should keep the carnivore in me occupied for the next few weeks.

Went out this evening to get some photos in the rain at St Mo’s, being careful to stick to the path.  Don’t want any more ticks.  Surprised to see that NLC have created an avenue of trees and reseeded the wild flower areas.  They must have cut out one of the councillors junkets to pay for that.  Light was terrible with ISOs in the thousands.  Last week I was struggling to keep the shutter speeds fast enough not to overexpose at ISO 100.  That’s the difference in being down south and up north.

More rain forecast tomorrow, so I doubt if we’ll be going far.

I can still see those yellow eyes.  Wish I’d thought to take a photo.

You don’t scare me M25 – 14 July 2016

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14 JulySet off today after a fairly decent breakfast at the services next to our overnight accommodation and slipped back on to the M6 heading south and trusting in the satnav to get us to Hazy & N D’Ag’s house.

All went swimmingly as we traversed the M6, the M42 and then the notorious M25. It wasn’t as bad as we expected … for us. On the other side, the clockwise carriageway, things weren’t quite as good with what looked like a 3 mile tailback due to an accident on the outside lane. A burned out car and a fire engine in attendance, but thankfully no ambulance.

The satnav on the iPhone got us almost to Chessington when the bloody thing switched off because it was overheating! Just when I needed it most. Things like that don’t happen in the temperate climate of Scotland, but apparently it does in tropical London. Unplugged it and let it cool for a few minutes while I overheated and drove on. It finally came back on just in time to tell me to take the next turnoff. After that I was on home ground and recognised some landmarks so I could self navigate.

Spent the afternoon with Hazy and N D’Ag before he left to go on his trip to Barcelona. Made paella for dinner, after walking to the Sainsburys at the railway station because it was soooo much quicker than taking the car. Anyway, the Megane was tired since it too had survived the scary M25.

Today’s pics come from the garden in Chessington. Lots to see here including a little mouse mopping up the fallen seeds from the birdfeeder and parakeets flying overhead when I was coming back from the shops. Did I just say Tropical London?

Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow. I thought Kingston, but Scamp says maybe Hampton Court. We’ll see.

Stupid O’ Clock – 7 July 2016

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7 JulyWoke at 6am and couldn’t get back to sleep again, so it was off again to Auchinstarry to walk along the canal to Twechar and then back along the railway to Auchinstarry again and then drive home for breakfast.  That’s twice this week I’ve needlessly woken and walked in the middle of the night, well, almost in the middle of the night!  The walk along the canal, although interesting wasn’t as good as Tuesday’s one along the railway.  Yes, the birds were singing and the smell of the flowers was great, but it was a lot cloudier today and the light wasn’t as good as Tuesday’s.  That said, I did manage to get a photo of a deer racing up towards Barr Hill and a nice wee peaceful shot of the canal at Smithstone.  Smithstone was a wee hamlet near Auchinstarry in the early 1900s.  My dad told me about it, but he pronounced it ‘Smeeston‘.  Now Smithstone is a new housing estate in Cumbernauld.

After breakfast, I took the car down to get expert opinion on a leaky gasket on the offside drive shaft.  It goes in tomorrow to get it fixed.  Apparently it’s a known problem with Renaults, but more of a problem with Corsas.  Why don’t manufacturers act on the information they are getting from dealers and redesign these things before they become a bigger problem.  That’s what turns people away from British and European cars.  I think our next car will be a Nissan, a Honda or a Kia.

We went to Vecchia Bologna for lunch and although it wasn’t the best I’ve had there, it was most enjoyable.
So tomorrow will be another enforced early rise to get a new gaiter fitted to the Megane.  What we do with the rest of the day will depend on the weather.  After a fairly decent day, it’s raining now, and is forecast to rain all night, but tomorrow is supposed to be fair.  Saturday is set fair too.  Sunday?  Oh dear, I think I’ll stay in bed all day on Sunday!

Cold Friday – 1 July 2016

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1 July bTwo weeks ago we were in sunny Ajaccio. Today we’re in Cold Cumbersheugh with the cold. Scamp threw out some bread for the birds and the birds came in a variety of sizes and types. After I’d chased the seagulls (AKA Shitehawks) the rest of the birds descended. Only the jackdaws seemed to hang back, which is strange for a member of the crow family. Usually they are almost as bad as the shitehawks. I did get a few decent shots of the jackdaw.

I went for a walk later in the afternoon and while I was walking through St Mo’s wood, I almost tramped on a wee bird. It was sitting on a branch in the long grass and looked as if it was completely lost. I did think of lifting it up into one of the trees, but the golden rule with wildlife which looks lost is don’t touch. Mum and dad birdie will be watching from the safety of the trees and if you disturb the youngster, they might just abandon it. Best to leave it to its fate.

Tonight I feel worse than I did this morning. The only good news is that Wales are into the next round of the Euros. It’s not that I’m interested in football or even that I support Wales. I just cheer for any team that plays England. Even better if, like Wales, they beat England, whatever the game.

Tonight Michael Gove announced his intention of standing for PM. Who could voter for such a Spitting Image puppet. He says he was born in Scotland. He wasn’t, he was born in Embra. Embra isn’t in Scotland, it’s in Embra.

Off to bed now, doped up with paracetamol and Benylin.  Feeling shivery tonight.  I even put the heating on!  Hope July warms up a bit.

The day that the rains came – 28 June 2016

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28 June bWoke with a sore throat. Actually it had started last night, but today it felt worse.  It could be the start of a cold, so I began dosing up with Vit C. The chemist once told me that when you start to feel the twinges that precede a cold, overdose on Vit C to give your body a chance to prepare. Some will argue that is nonsense, but it works for me, so that is what I did. Your body has a limit to the amount of Vit C it can hold.  How do you know when you’ve reached your body’s limit of that vitamin? Your body will flush it out, along with most of the stuff that’s in your digestive system at the time. That’s where I am at present 😉

As for the rest of the day, there wasn’t much to report other than it rained again, almost all day in fact. I managed a couple of shots from the back window while I was making dinner. Chilli con Carne for me and Peppers & Mushrooms with Rice for Scamp. Actually, Scamp had been out with her friend for lunch, so I didn’t expect her to need any food at dinner time, which is why I defrosted the mince for mine.

While Scamp was out to lunch, I took her car through the car wash. I think the poor bloke who runs it thought we had found the car somewhere. It looked like one of those you see in overgrown front gardens with flat tyres and a brushed on paint job. Once it came out the other end of the wash tunnel it was sparkling clean. When I dropped it off for Scamp to drive back from the restaurant, I noticed the cut in the front tyre. Oh dear, more expense. My car goes in for new brake disks tomorrow. It’s just an expensive time of year!

Hoping for a better day tomorrow, but not at all confident that we’ll get it. More rain forecast, but Thursday looks a lot better.

Down Glasgow Green – 5 June 2016

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5 JuneIt was such a beautiful day, we just drove down Glasgow Green and wandered through to the McLellan arch and back along the river on the park side this time, not the Gorbals side like we did a few weeks ago. That was a bit strange. It seemed to be Ladies Day on the river with only a very few men out rowing.  We’re sitting in the People’s Palace now. Near the door to get the benefit of the cooling breeze. We usually avoid these seats because of the cold draught. Not today.

After that gentle exercise, we drove home and while Scamp did a bit of sun worshipping, I went out on the bike and cycled down to Auchinstarry (because I reckoned I wouldn’t get parked – I would have) and from there along the canal which is where I was and photographed Mrs Mallard and her seven wee ducklings out for a paddle.  I simply couldn’t pass up that opportunity now, could I?  From there it was all uphill.  Up the first tough climb from the canal to Twechar itself, then the long slog up to the Drumgrew bridge.  I stopped off there for some water.  This was the first stop from the canal at Twechar and I’m quite proud of it.  Had a wee rest in the garden after my run.  My legs are sore tonight, but I enjoyed it.  May go in to Glasgow tomorrow to get a UV filter for the new lens.  Saves me using and losing the tiny wee lens cap.  Best make good use of the sun as it looks like drizzle on Tuesday.  Oh dear!

Keep taking the tablets – 30 May 2016

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30 MayWe went in to Glasgow with the stated intention of getting a tablet/laptop.  Apparently what I was looking for was a “2 in 1”, which I suppose describes it quite well.

Note to JIC.  
Please feel free to ignore this part as it’s almost all technospeak.
First stop was Staples where I saw the cheapo looking Linx 10.1″ tablet with a clamshell keyboard/lid.  Cheapo maybe, but it had 2 x USB3 ports and 1 x micro USB for power and doubling as a port if you have an OTG (On The Go) cable.  Even better, it was at a bargain price of £149.99.  Ok, one possible.
Ok, JIC, Technospeak over.

Next stop was John Lewis who on paper had a load of these 2 in 1s.  Unfortunately, if we ignore the very expensive Mickysoft offerings, there were only two.  One was an Acer with no price on it and no power in the battery, the other was an HP at £80 more than the cheapo Linx.  The spec appeared to be almost the same, in fact it only had 1 x USB port and 1 x micro USB.  So it looks like it’s back to Staples.

Before that, Scamp decided that lunch at Patisserie Valerie was in order.  Since she prefers to eat inside, we got a table no bother because everyone wanted to sit outside in the sun.  Had our order taken: Crayfish Salad for both of us and Apple Pie for after for Scamp, Pecan Pie for me.  Tea for both.
The tea arrived, and so did the manager to apologise, but there was no Pecan Pie.  No problem, I’d just have the Apple Pie.  A little later he arrived back to say that sorry, there was no Crayfish Salad.  He did offer alternatives.  Scamp went for Chicken Caesar and I chose Chicken Brochette.  We’d been sitting for 20 minutes by this time.  Half an hour later and still nothing had arrived although the manager had floated past about 15 minutes before to say that my chicken was just going on the grill.  I’d had enough.  We offered to pay for the two teas, but the girl on the till would have nothing of it and told us the manager “should have been dealing with it.”  If I’d had to speak to the manager himself, Begbie would have come out of the box again.

Back at Staples, I bought the Linx.  Unfortunately, when I got it home, I found that it looked nothing like what I’d seen in the shop.  Quick phone call and was told to bring it back and they’d exchange it for the correct one.  I did, they did and this time I checked it before I left the shop.  So far, it’s doing everything I expected it to do.  Pity the same can’t be said for Patisserie Valerie.

More sun promised for tomorrow.  Bring it on!

When is a laptop not a laptop – 28 May 2016

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28 May wWe drove into Stirling today for lunch at the Indian and not a lot else. The lunch was good and instead of nan bread we had chapatis. Scamp and I don’t like this new idea of chopping up a nan bread and serving it in a basket. I suspected that unscrupulous restaurants could be collecting uneaten nan pieces from previous diners baskets and using them to pad out new ones. Just a suspicion, but Scamp agreed that it was an unsavoury possibility, so we decided it would be better to get chapatis which are served whole.

On the way to the restaurant, I dallied in Stirling’s computer shop. I’d been looking for a laptop to take on holiday and I’d had a few bargains in the past from Computer Depot. Years ago, Ali, the owner, sold me a little MP3 music player that has a massive 64MB memory and also took extra memory in the form of SmartMedia cards. This probably means nothing to most people these days, but back at the turn of the century (that sounds such a long time ago, doesn’t it) they were very high tech and could be had in sizes up to 128MB. With a 128MB card in the player, you could have almost 3 hours of music at your disposal. I still have the Diamond Rio music player, and occasionally it will work. Anyway, there were no laptops that were in my price range. What they did have was one of the new (well, new to me) 2 in 1 tablets with a clip on keyboard.

<TechnoSpeak>
It only 32GB storage and 2GB RAM, but the processor was a quad 1.33Mhz with the ability to run at 1.83Mhz in burst mode. It had one USB 3 port and a micro USB 2 which, as well as being used as a charging port, could double as an import/outport device with an On The Go (OTG) cable. It was running 32bit Windows 10 which is a lot better than I thought, now that I know how to ‘refresh’ the install. The 32 GB wouldn’t be nearly enough storage for holiday photos, but if I used the USB port to connect an external hard drive it would be a neat solution to the problem. Almost as neat as the old HP netbook but much faster. Certainly worth considering. I didn’t dive in and buy the one he had on offer, mainly because I couldn’t find any reviews of it on the net, but I’m looking at alternative versions. In the words of Facebook, “A lot has changed in laptops since you last looked.”
</TechnoSpeak>

Today was a good day weather-wise and tomorrow is meant to be even better. We’ll see.

An EARLY start – 24 May 2016

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May 24 bDrove in to Glasgow just for a walk and to get some stuff for the hols.  Didn’t even go to the art shop!

Actually, that’s only half the story.  I woke about 4.20am and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I think it was all that sitting around on one train, then on another train, then on one more train.  Hardly walked anything at all, so I just wasn’t tired, so I got up and dressed and went over to St Mo’s to grab some of that early morning light.  It was a good decision.  Got some nice captures of closeups with that lovely light.  There was a bit of mist on the pond, but if I’d been just a little bit earlier, it would have been better – never happy.  Used the macro lens for the closeups and as usual was impressed with the sharpness.  See if you can spot the reflection.  You might have to go to the Flickr feed to spot it.

In the town I was listening to the bloke playing the sax.  When a photog started taking his picture he began to ham it up and I decided I’d have a piece of that too.  I liked the close cropped shot.  When we walked through the St Enoch’s centre there was a boxing promotion with a ring set up.  Ricky Burns did a bit of shadow boxing and I managed about 6 shots of him.  The mono was the best.  I liked the gritty feel of it.  I felt he looked like a boxer.

So that was a long day, but even now I don’t feel tired.  It was a great start to the day and the rest wasn’t all that bad either.
Repairs day tomorrow.  Doctor and Dentist – a glutton for punishment!

Walking in the Sunshine – 22 May 2016

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22may bIt’s a sunny Sunday and after breakfast we headed off over the fields and far away.  Luckily Sim is friendly with the farmer and we got permission to walk through the horses’ fields to the right-of-way.  I’m not that happy walking in fields with actual horses in them.  Sim calls them ‘ponies’, but these aren’t anything like the ‘My Little Pony’ my daughter had when she was wee.  These are big brown monsters, much bigger than me, but I treated them like I treat anyone bigger than me – don’t make eye contact, pretend they’re not there and everything will be fine.  I did, and it was.  we reached the relative safety of the road.  Relative safety because this is a narrow single track road, but the drivers seem to think it’s their own personal autobahn.  In other words, they think there is no speed limit.  That said, we survived the killer ponies and the madskull drivers and started on our walk proper.  Like yesterday it was mainly between fields of wheat and also yellow rapeseed.  I synched the camera with my iPhone to allow me to geotag the photos.  I knew it would only work with the ’10 and not the ‘5, but that wouldn’t matter because at least I’d have a record of the walk that I could plot on a map when I got back home.  Checked the first one and all seemed to be well.  We walked for an hour or so.  Probably more than an hour because although JIC and Scamp were charging on ahead, Sim and I were constantly stopping to get some photos.

When we got to the top of one of the hills, gentle hills. This is Engerland, not mountainous Scottishland remember.  They don’t do real hills here.  Anyway, when we got to the main road at the top of one of the hills, there was a debate as to whether we should return by the same route or do a round trip.  The round trip would mean walking on the grass verge at the side of the road and, since we’d already seen the stock car racing that was being done on the narrow road, we didn’t fancy our chances on the main road, so it was back the way we’d come.

On the way back we got a really good view of the ‘Chicken Prison’ or battery hen farm.  If you’ve seen one of these travesties you will know why Scamp won’t but the cheapest chicken, but rather the free range ones.  At least they had a slightly better life.  We also got to see how a lovely vista across the green fields is destroyed by a solar panel farm.  Just to complete the trilogy, there was a wind farm behind us.  I’m all for being ‘green’, but just how efficient are these blots on the landscape?  Wind farm windmills are white (white = pure) and generally now they are painted green at the bottom (green = natural).  It’s all colour psychology, or kidology might be a more accurate description.  During the first two weeks in April in Scotland almost no wind energy was generated as the wind wasn’t strong enough.  It is not a viable alternative to traditional methods of generating electricity.  Enough of the rant.

Back home after passing the demon ponies again, we had ice lollies and Pimms for lunch, then watched JIC starting the barbecue that would provide our supper.  What a supper.  Chicken kebabs for Scamp. Pork burger and sausages for the carnivores.

Dumped my photos and oh, oh, it looked like only one photo had been geotagged!  Bummer.  Then when I got them all in there were 40 tagged photos.  Only one session, but forty photos in the session.  All was good.  Just as a finale, a woodpecker arrived at the bird table.  I’ve never managed to get a photo of one.  This one was a bit twitchy.  Every time I went near the window, it went and hid in the big tree at the side of the garden.  However, I managed about four good shots from a sitting position on the couch!

Back home tomorrow.  I’d love to have stayed longer, but all good things must come to an end.  We had an excellent day and an excellent break.  Three days with Hazy and N D’Ag and three days with Sim and JIC.