#i love you nuthatches. and i hate you so. so much

[ashfdhfgdsfk]

i love birds. i consider myself to be a friend of the birds. however. @ the little family of nuthatches that continuously insist upon pecking and knocking at the thin walls directly opposite my head every single goddamn morning, day, and night. i will see you in the pits of hell.

[headspace-hotel]

some times i see people talking about the Earth and climate change saying things like "now i know it is difficult to deal with utter hopelessness, terror, and visiting the thoughts of death"

and it's like wow I am so deeply sorry about the suffering. but...concern. Concern. Tell me, am I missing something important? Why do I feel a sense of hope for our planet? Am I a lonely fool? Have I been consumed by naïveté and misguided optimism?

That would be weird. It feels weird. It feels like I would be well suited to despair. My natural temperament is Mortal Terror making my body crushed for a thousand years at the bottom of the deepest trenches of the ocean. I've thought before "I can't live any more. This exceeds the tensile strength of the human spirit."

And then? After irreversible catastrophic failure of the soul, there is...what?

We try to imagine the future where we fight to save our home and it is very painful. The resistance feels so small and the machine of death feels so vast. But something's missing.

Everyone else is missing—the plants, trees, bugs, beasts, and creatures. Hello? Are the other humans seeing this? Nature wants you to know that she is not a princess in a tower. Look! Look at the chaos moving through every cell! Iterating! Adapting! Becoming! Thriving! Watch the pollinators tirelessly at work, observe the mycorrhizal network in the forest floor distributing the rich fruits of decay and photosynthesis for every inhabitant! Pay attention! We belong here too. They feed and shelter us, give us the very air we breathe, and in return we plant and propagate, cull, thin, and burn, shape, trample, till, shepherd and sprout seeds. Our species can look toward the future, to the world of our descendants. We can call every plant and animal by name and teach our children to use and care for them responsibly. We can feel this anger, pain, and grief on behalf of the family of Life, OUR family, and we can love the smallest beetle and the humblest moss.

Look at it! This thing is nothing like me, it does not benefit me, it has no use or purpose for me, but LOOK at it! Look at its intricate structure! Look at the marvelousness of its behaviors and biological functions! Look at its uniqueness throughout the whole universe! Look at it, and see its infinite value!

I saved a baby tree from the scorching hot gravel of a parking lot. I watched it grow and thrive in the hands of its caretaker. Many more followed, trees and herbs and flowers, rescued and carefully placed in cups and old tubs that once held yogurt and sour cream. This is so strange, I thought. They're everywhere, offering themselves for free, and no one thinks to take them. Everyone thinks transplanting a tree is hard and that nothing grows on the edge of the pavement but weeds. But it's so easy??? This is weird. Plant Nurseries Hate Her: Get Free Plants With This One Weird Trick.

I protected an old barren garden patch where nothing had thrived from being mowed and weed-whacked, and transplanted little plants that I found. I marveled at the bees that came. Chicory bloomed, then asters and goldenrod. I shed actual tears over a spicebush swallowtail. I ordered some milkweed from the internet, and the monarchs came for them. Less then twenty-five bucks for a divine experience like this. Wow, everyone else really needs to know!

I started volunteering at a nature center, and was allowed to transplant flowers where they sprouted in inopportune locations. I collected tons of seeds all fall and winter long.

There is much, much more, all of it bigger than I ever would have imagined. But this spring there were more birds, in number and in species, than I'd ever seen in my back yard before. Chickadees, swallows, finches, nuthatches, jays, cardinals, warblers, sparrows, woodpeckers of every kind...I remembered just a couple years prior when all I ever saw out there was a couple grackles or starlings or robins, with the occasional sparrow. Those birds come in flocks rather than couples now. And then the bumblebee arrived. An American bumblebee, endangered now, a queen. For a few days she was always out there, would fly out and buzz around me when I came out to tend to my now-innumerable plants. It's nesting time for them. She chose this place I was creating. She saw that this place would take care of her.

A week ago, I discovered wild strawberries growing in my Mamaw's driveway. I found lyreleaf sage growing beside a gravel road. I've become a master of transplanting; I took several of each home. Yesterday, I saw a tiny, metallic blue bee, an Osmia mason bee. Today, I saw an oriole and a strange, very fancy fly. I see something new almost every day. Every day I am being irreversibly changed as a person. How did I ever fail to see how much this matters?

I said I feel hope...do I feel it? I don't think it's a feeling, I think it's a practice. It's being part of our communities and our ecosystems. Nature's interconnectedness is both reality and example: to survive, we take care of one another. And when one member of the community helps another thrive, it creates a cascade that increases the thriving of all. Just by existing, you help us all survive.

You can only take care of so many plants before you have to give some away. You can only hold so much knowledge before you have to give it away. I gave seeds to a dozen different flowers to my next-door neighbor and she invited me inside and wouldn't let me leave without food, and we talked about plants and trees. A family friend lets me have goats' milk and heirloom vegetables in exchange for help around the farm, and I listen to him talk about trees, bugs, and soil and learn so much I feel like I'm about to explode from knowledge.

Being a caretaker is unavoidably a community-oriented, community-forming thing. You can't grow plants all by yourself. Your garden will make too many tomatoes. Share them. Your milkweed will make hundreds and hundreds of seeds. Spread them. Wild blackberries invite you to take and eat. Your lonely retired neighbor invites you to talk and keep her company. Once you grow delicious fruits or little oak trees, you always have a reason to greet someone and say, "Look, it is a gift!"

We're not alone. We are not separate. We take care of each other. Every species, every individual. A single action of caretaking creates a cascade effect of thriving. A single unapologetic love for a creature creates a blossom of curiosity and fascination in everyone surrounding. It's so powerful.

As my chemical romance says "I am not afraid to keep on living"

[sussex-nature-lover]

Sunday 7 August 2022

Wood in the Woods and Back To The Garden

For a few days we’ve been watching this large hornet on the cut end of a branch in the woods. There were also several flies and midge type insects, all apparently ok side by side. The flies are so bright, like luminous beetle wings. I think they look like those Semaphore flies that were on the pond or Ellen Terry’s famous beetle wing dress National Trust link.

We always read about the diverse biosphere within woodland and here it was demonstrated in front of our own eyes and so quickly too.

After such a long time only hearing the green woodpeckers, we’ve seen a lot of them lately and quite a few holes in the big, old trees around.

Back in the garden, the squirrels have been all over the hazel trees and the ground below is absolutely covered in nutshells, both ancient brown ones and the immature ones too.

We’ve actually dug up some oak saplings in the woods for transplanting to move to sensible locations. The amount of acorns we have suggests that’s going to be a recurring job because the squirrels have no spacial awareness and overcrowding was quite a problem.

Only part made of wood, but every morning I have to repair the bug hotel from its early hours attacks. At the end of the season I think I may have to deploy some wood glue or this is going to be yet another never ending job and it won’t help the bees either.

Away From the Wood

Looking around the flowers - which as you probably know are a bit thin on the ground in our garden (NO pun intended there, I promise🤸🏻‍♀️ ) I spotted this rogue orange poppy in the plant that Ms NWtE gave me at the start of summer.

That raised a smile, as did...

my large pink Hibiscus shrub having its first flowers of the year (1st August)This huge bush is going to be absolutely covered and aren’t they attractive.

Something else springing back to life is a New Zealand palm which we’d cut down as it’s directly outside a window and had absolutely blocked all the light. It’s doing really well again at a lower level. We’ve taken inspiration and cut down some trunks in the back garden too. Originally these were in pots but they outgrew them far too quickly and we now have a love-hate relationship with them. Hate as they’re incongruous in an English rural garden, love that they add a bit of a holiday destination feeling (love’s a bit strong, tolerate would be nearer the mark) but do love how the birds use and enjoy them, particularly nuthatch and woodpeckers.

Last night Crow called me to take pics of the sunset at the front of the house. To be honest, the photos really don’t do it justice, it was very striking.

The reason I’ve included two pictures though is to get my own back on him for last week’s bread-roll-hedgehog debacle. Do bear in mind that we’ve been together since we were at school and all our lives he’s had eyesight so much better than mine that I’ve had too many faux pas over the years. Of course since I had my bionic eyes and as time’s passed and the inevitable’s happened to his aging vision, the table’s have turned.

May I present you with his astonishment at the buzzard above the telegraph pole.

Let me tell you now, that buzzard had already booked its landing slot on one of the Gatwick runways. Mwah ha haaaaa. My hedgehog was SO much more believable and I won’t hear anyone say any different.

The plan for later on is to get out and survey the garden that’s been neglected all week. Before the hosepipe ban comes into effect at the end of the week we must tend to the pond, although as we really must prioritise Saving Water, I’ll be checking for more advice from the RSPB here. I think I’ll have to move a lot of our pots to more shady spots as a starter and that’s going to take a while, so I’d better crack on and see what else I can do to help. Small steps but they all count right?

[chenziee]

Do you have any ereri fic recommandation? I read the 6th ward yesterday (and I'm still slowly moving on, it was so sad ;-; but in a weird way it made me accept Sasha's death in the manga more easily, and it's all good), so preferably a long one please. Thank you for being awesome!

Aaahh, thank you ;__;

Hmm, I have a few fic recs but I’m not sure what you have and haven’t read so I’ll just throw in whatever has stuck with me through all these years and I can think of off the top of my head meaning these might be fics that have been recced a million times over already because they are good. If you want more/something else, let me know :)(On that note, I’d like to direct you to @fuckyeahererifanfic who have a large and beautifully categorized database of ereri fic to fit any specific needs

I’m only going to link COMPLETED fics, because I tend to only read those AND I have a particular track record of fics being abandonded after I pick them up and now have trust issues but if you want some in-progress fics, I can rec some too.

The Little Titan Cafe by @pocketsizedtitan (66k words): Modern, coffee shop AU and the cutest thing.

Just another cliche AU in which Eren works as a barista in his mother’s café, specializing in latte art. And then there’s Levi, who’s not exactly your typical patron, because, well, he’s blunt and rude (which Eren supposes isn’t that much different from regular customers) but mostly he just confuses Eren’s poor little homosexual heart. 

Nuthatch (31k words) and the sequel Sparrow (116k words) by @sugarplum-senpai Canonverse. Pining and slow burn at it’s finest. All I’m going to say about it.

After the war has ended, Levi finds himself thrown into coerced retirement. With nothing but time on his hands, he buys an old house, and throws himself into renovation work to fulfill himself an old, almost forgotten dream: opening a tea shop. If only he could forget about expressive, green eyes and a smile like sunshine. Luckily, he’s still got Hanji.

[Prequel to “Sparrow”]

After the war has ended, Eren’s life is finally good. He’s seen the ocean, is back at HQ where he trains the new Scouts, and he has dinner with Levi every single night. So yes. Things are just as well.

[Sequel to Nuthatch | can be read as stand-alone work]

The Old Boat House by @oppa86oppa (102k words): Modern/fantasy AU, Levi is a merman (fitting to read during mermay no?) Has some andgst and some fluff, a bit of everything, really.

One night after Eren and his friends share a bottle of whisky, two bottles of whatever Annie brought and a couple of ghost stories, they walk the path along the gravel road, through the wheat field and past the small forest and stumble upon the old boat house. Inside they find something that’s sleeping on the bottom of the lake, someone clearly not human. One of them comes up with the idea they should catch it, probably fucking Jean, and in their surprise they actually succeed. However, in mere seconds the situation is suddenly turned completely upside down.

Eren doesn’t fall into the water, he doesn’t jump, he’s pulled down.

Art of War by catsonfire(53k words): Modern AU, fluff and comedy

Noisy neighbors, nursling dinosaurs, satanic box cutters, shitty convenience store management, the word ‘fuck’, hereditary (but not really) homosexuality, beer and ramen, pennies, truckstops, strippers, closets, semi-public defacing, rings, house parties, “recreational” drug use, accidental rendezvous, toxic stew (don’t eat the stew), nice abs, housewives–batteries not included, over-educational movie sessions, copious domesticity, kittens named after landlords, a shit joke at participating locations, and many, many happy endings.A modern AU in which Eren moves into the apartment directly above Levi’s.

Do you want me or do you want me dead? by fmaloser (82k words): Modern not-your-typical-high-school AU. A personal favourite of mine and the amount of kudos is a sacrilage. Although yes, it’s dark. There is blood and gore. The relationship they have is not healthy. Lots of angst. Boys are both broken and break other peoples’ bones, but I love them for it. (Read the tags before reading the fic.)

It’s decided that the school douchebag, Levi, needs a tutor to help get his grades back up. It’s also decided that high school senior, Eren, is perfect for the job.At first, the two hate each other. But after their pasts come back to bite them in the ass, they realize that maybe that’s not the case.

An Unlikely Alliance by @monsoondownpour (117k words) Arranged Marriage Between Waring Kingdoms AU. Everything you want from a good fic.

When Scouting Legions main trading partner, Wall Maria, is experiencing economic strain from constant attacks by the neighboring kingdom Titan, the leaders of the two nations come to an agreement: Scouting Legion will provide military protection in exchange for land and financial aid for the still growing nation.Their new alliance will be sealed with the union of King Jaegar’s son Eren to the Scouting legions strongest soldier, Lance Corporal Levi. But how will the cold, impassive soldier warm to his new husband, who is far from the weak, spoiled princess he was expecting?

Witch’s Vein and Bloodstains by @monsoondownpour (38k words) Fantasy AU. Not that long but so beautifully written it’s unreal. The atmosphere and how it’s delivered is honestly something I aspire to.

In a land of sentient forests and unpredictable magic, it is never wise to venture far without a witch.  

The Survey Corps is in dire need of a replacement after a tragic accident took Ilse’s life in a quest gone horribly wrong. Eren might not be what anyone expected, but he has raw talent and curious allure that even Captain Levi can’t deny. When circumstances conspire to pit the squad against the same adversary that took Ilse barely a year ago, will they be able to handle the challenge a second time round?

Fallen Star @monsoondownpour (31k words) Modern AU. Lots of angst. Actually it’s mostly angst because even the ridiculously fluffy parts hurt. (But spoiler: happy ending, yay!)

Detective Levi Ackerman had his life in order; a steady job he enjoyed, a close circle of friends, and a spitfire little sister who was all the family he could ever want or need. His world was a simple one until ballet prodigy Eren Jaeger stumbled into it.Someone like Eren didn’t belong in his world.Now he wasn’t sure how he would live without him.

Lists by Trick_Fantasy (72k words) College AU. Can be highly triggering for anxiety, there is emotional manipulation, and VERY toxic friendships. It’s about learning to get past all of that. Read at own risk. But it’s an amazing fic and will forever be one of my favourites.

The story of Levi (“Why bother trying to make friends when you can learn to control people instead?”) and Eren (“Because you can control people better when they think that they’re your friends. They don’t even know they’re being manipulated.”) coping with social interaction at college in their own different ways.

Augenfresser by @foxicology (75k words) Modern/Fantasy AU. Horror/Thriller. Deals with heavy stuff, the ending is up for interpretation and known to fuck people up. Be warned.

Monsters did not like to hide under beds, as his father had told him. No; he found the monster hiding in his closet.

Love.exe by @cofferi (70k words) Modern AU. Finishing off with more fluff/comedy so I don’t seem like such a psycho. Definitely a fun read.

All Levi wants to do is drink tea, run his goddamn convenience store, and not have to deal with this kid who keeps coming in to leech his wifi bringing down high-end corporations.

Also literally anything by @sciencefictioness is a sure bet. Just saying.

Also going to take the oppotunity to throw in my own AO3 because why the hell not (although it’s mostly oneshots).

I’m very sure I’m missing some amazing fics and authors but this is what I could think off at 1AM and not make it a mile long post. I hope you find something you haven’t read and that you enjoy these gems anon :)

.

.

.

Also I can’t help but throw this fic in:

Tinsel Town by TheWonderYears (33k words) Modern AU. Psychotic-murder-boyfriends AU. Seriously. It’s very graphic. Blood, gore, torture, all the fun stuff. I love it. My ultimate fave, always and forever.

There’s Definitely Something In The Water.

Aaaand there goes my ‘I’m not a psycho’ claim.

[rilenerocks]

I started making lists when I was about twelve. I know this because I have them. Mostly the lists were about people. People I liked, people I had crushes on, people I hated. The lists changed frequently, sometimes almost daily. Often there were ties for first, second and even third place. When my friend Fern and I spent hours on the phone at night, reading each other our diary entries, we’d sometimes make lists together. We had enemies lists which often included politicians we heard our parents discussing. We had favorite athletes lists and music lists, teachers lists and of course, lists of our peers and family members.

We changed popular song lyrics to reflect our current passions and we had so much fun singing them, especially the ones that were Beatles songs. I still find myself substituting our words when a tune pops up in one of my playlists. You’d never have known that either one of us had a care in the world. But of course we did.

My lists got more complicated as time passed. There were the standard lists that were more like timetables, when work needed to be done, birthdays and events that needed to be remembered, the stuff of calendars. But I had lots of other lists too. In my attempt to keep my priorities straight, I managed to write lists for a wide variety of topics. I had self-improvement lists, lists of books to read and movies to see, lists of subjects to become knowledgeable about, lists of places to see and goals to accomplish. I have a list I call “the permanent list.” That’s the one that has the unforgivable words or actions of people that I’ll never forget or forgive until either my brain or breath goes.

“Michael Quotes”

Right now I have a list of nicknames Michael called me. I also have a list of his terrible jokes and funny quotes that are part of our family’s vernacular.

“Birds of today” Starling Blue jay White breasted nuthatch Sparrow Cardinals Downy woodpecker Carolina wren Brown thrasher Cowbirds Catbird White crowned sparrow Hummingbird Grackle House wren Rose breasted Grosbeak American Robin Chipping sparrow White throated sparrow Redbellied woodpecker Red breasted nuthatch Goldfinch Junco

I have lists of birds and butterflies that have visited my garden. I have lists that are so obtuse I can’t recall why the words are on the same page. The habit of listmaking is a part of me which I suspect will go on until I don’t. After years of waking up and thinking of the day ahead, asking myself what I should think about first, I figure this was a pretty rational response to the flood of thoughts that’s my typical response to opening my eyes.

I suspect that some of my dreams are my subconscious attempts to keep sorting through the ever burgeoning thought stack in my head. Some people hoard stuff. I hoard words, ideas and feelings. I’m aware that the sorting by list is ineffectual at times. For now, it’s become clear to me that I can’t anticipate how long it may take, if ever, to always remember that Michael is dead. I mean, I know that he is. But when ambling through my days there are countless times when I expect him to walk through the door. If I feel like ignoring a text, I always think, wait, it might be Michael. I’ve called my son his name periodically.

In our younger days, Michael owned the car of his dreams, a white 1967 GTO convertible. Vroom, vroom. Today I was in a bookstore and saw a thick shiny book on the history of GTO’s and walked straight over to it, thinking I’d buy it for him and how much he’d love it. These moments are fleeting but real. If I don’t like my dreams, the ones when he and I are arguing, it sours my day. When I have a good dream about him, I wake up and acknowledge that feeling before going back to sleep.

September 17th, 2019

 Hi baby,

  Things are better now. Tristan is healing well from his surgery and Gabriel turned 9 today.

And I’m still writing the letters that represent our constant dialogue over so many years. I can’t list myself out of these deeply ingrained habits that had to do with our life together. Although not quite a complete germophobe, I don’t expect that I’ll ever be without a small container of hand sanitizer in my purse. When he was immunocompromised, I was determined not to let him get sick. I sprayed surfaces with Lysol and suspiciously counted the number of times people touched their mouths and noses and then put their hands on common surfaces. Whatever I could control I did control. Endless hand washing and hyper- awareness. Good luck getting rid of that. I know it’s a peculiar preoccupation to watch people spreading their contagion around but it’s just normal to me now. I forgive myself. I try not to be angry about all that he’s missed and that we’ll miss together. That’s a terrible place to be. I only allow myself those thoughts for short moments. I think my quality of life would truly be pathetic if I got stuck in those mean, jealous places. The list habit comes in handy during those times. I can think of about a zillion things that should supersede that negativity.

Right now, I’m in the midst of other people’s hardships. I’m knowing more and more sick people and I have one very dear friend who’s in hospice awaiting her death. That’s at the top of all my lists now, along with the knowledge that as I’m aging, I’ll face more and more of those sad times. My dad always used to say that if you’re lucky enough to survive to age 70, sometimes you can just cruise along for awhile. He never got there. Neither did Michael or my favorite brother-in-law. All lost at age 67. I’m past that age now. I wonder when my turn will come to face my own demise. I don’t know if I’d think about it as much as I do except for how many early deaths I experienced. Nah, I probably would.

I always expected to just keel over one day like a tree felled in a wood. I certainly didn’t expect to be around longer than Michael who came from a family where everyone routinely lived into their 90’s. I think we’ve all been led to believe that’s possible for the majority of people but I don’t think that’s right. For every octogenarian, there are dozens of people who’ve already checked out.

I’m in the middle of three history classes this semester which are jamming huge swaths of time into 8 weekly hour and a half sessions. I come out of those classes dizzied by the compression of geologic time and long-gone civilizations that can be glanced over and set aside before tackling thousands more years. You realize how teeny you really are when looking at the world in these abbreviated segments. It’s fascinating stuff but absent a time machine, wrapping your mind around the brevity of our lives on a comparative scale is pretty daunting. And kind of comforting at the same time.

It’s only Wednesday and this week, I’ve considered the pre-Scottish elders and the Bog people alongside the Greeks and the Babylonians. We’ve looked at art and religious rituals, at least insofar as archaeologists have theorized about them and shared with us. I’ve been in ice ages and ridden tectonic plates and recognized that the Scottish oceanside rocks are basically the same as Maine’s because they used to be connected. All quite dazzling ideas that stimulate me to make more lists of things to explore, knowing full well there isn’t enough time for me in this universe to get through even a twentieth of what I’m writing down. But the habit is there and so I do it.

Lately because a cell phone makes it so easy to photograph anything, I’ve begun supplementing my endless writing with pictures to illustrate my lists. I have a photo of every place I’ve ever lived in but one because it was demolished a long time ago. I can always think of something new that needs to be photographed.

I have my butterfly and bird photos to go with their documentation as yard visitors. I keep having my storage on my phone fill up because I’m documenting everything. Maybe there’s a gene for this need to list and illustrate. It’s so much a part of me that I was lucky to start early and thus have plenty of writing and pictures of me in many moments with Michael and my family,  including really intimate ones. Ah, the days of the self-developing Polaroids. I was compelled to record. I think my daughter is like me. A record keeper. Maybe it’s a coping skill, a way to not be overwhelmed by the complexity of our lives. We certainly have more than our share of angst right now and I think lots of people feel the stress. So I suppose I’ll keep at it, trying to organize everything and trying not to forget what’s important. I guess I could have worse habits. Even a little Purell isn’t that bad.

Habits I started making lists when I was about twelve. I know this because I have them. Mostly the lists were about people.

[sussex-nature-lover]

Tuesday 27th July 2021

A Small Catch Up

With all the heavy rains we’ve had (yes more storms) and strong sunshine at times too, the garden is even more jungle-like than ever. Without a shadow of a doubt the inadvertent blackberries will be strong this year. This corner of the decking is being engulfed and we’ve got a feeling that someone has taken up a summer residence in the copper bowl. I must get the binoculars out upstairs to spy.

Finally, finally, after all that’s happened since Christmas 2019, The Naturewatch Family were reunited together for lunch at home last Sunday. I was worried that it may not happen as Ms NW tE had her second jab the day before and we didn’t want her travelling if she felt under the weather. She wasn’t feeling the best, but soldiered on. We weren’t able to sit out as we’d hoped, because true to the forecast, it rained and we had quite a violent thunderstorm too, but luckily for us we weren’t affected by the local and London flooding (some of the underground tube stations suffered quite bad flash floods) and the girls didn’t even get too wet on their journeys to and from. Not really what you expect in July is it, but, that said, it was a lunch for my birthday and apparently I was born (at High Noon no less) in the middle of a fearsome thunder storm, arriving alongside a horrendous thunderclap. Hhhhmmmm. My late mother hated thunder and lightning, she was one of those people who went around the house unplugging every device, starting with the TV aerial. Meanwhile Dad would lift me up on to the window sill to watch events. My birth was always made to sound like it was accompanied by the portents of doom and damnation, a bit like a Hollywood blockbuster’s special effects at their finest, but I reckon there was more than a fair bit of dramatic licence there and thankfully I didn’t grown up scared of the elements - sensible, yes and definitely cautious as we have had an internet router fried by lightning in the past, but apart from respectful concerns about physical damage I’m pretty relaxed about the weather.

Back to birthdays. I had some really lovely gifts from the girls, I mean really lovely and very much appreciated. I’m thrilled when a gift is something that Crow can enjoy too and even moreso when it’s something for the garden. We’re debating at the moment where this bug hotel is going to be positioned. Somewhere we can see it from the house I think. Isn’t it a fab one.

Ms NW tE also made a birthday cake, it’s absolutely delicious and so discreet with just a single candle (very wise) 

Sadly Inspector Pritchard failed to put in an appearance for the visitors, but we were busy chattering away anyhow. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see them both and to be together. How much we’ve missed each other.

No, it didn’t come with the ends missing!

Background Marmalade is from Rick Stein’s place - a little gift from Ms NW tY’s travels last week (not the only gift I hasten to add, just one that happens to be sat on the kitchen island)

GARDEN UPDATE:

The Goldfinch are back in the garden again and Daisy Waldron the Wood Pigeon is sitting on her nest in the Wisteria. All the other usual suspects are trundling along as per usual, but on Sunday and yesterday I also saw a Kestrel in the garden. I wonder if it’s the same female as last year and if she has young again? We must go up to the farm and see if we can spot any.

Meanwhile it was really nice to be asked to confirm an ID today for our London correspondent and yes, she was correct, she’d spotted a Nuthatch visiting her bird table. Hoorah!

Nature Photo pages on Tumblr HERE

[sussex-nature-lover]

Friday 31st July 2020

Oh Lovely, almost The Weekend (Again)

Ugh. Another Flying Ant Day yesterday afternoon. I hate it but I videoed one area, there were others, because at one stage they were quite mesmerising, like a grotesque representation of champagne bubbles in a glass. I know which I prefer (go on, take a wild guess)  but the birds quite liked them. You’ll need to tilt your head as I didn’t think it through when I grabbed the camera.

Apparently it was widespread through West Sussex yesterday too.

I was keeping an eye on the feeders and some of my favourites were in attendance and then, later on, when the light was almost gone (scroll down)

Nuthatch and Blue Tits

My super favourites were back, albeit briefly, again

Grainy photos as the light was dimming

The lovely Long Tailed Tit This one not so very long tailed. Is it a youth? It has a young look to me (my personal criteria ha ha) although I suppose there is an argument that LTTs never look old.

I’ve got to admit that these are the first photos where I’ve noticed a golden eyelid colour in the LTTs, I recall them as usually having a deep pinky red colour, so I Googled and found this, which has a further link to a research paper. I skimmed it quickly but must go back and read thoroughly.

Got to admit - and I realise I may be very late to the party on this - it’s slightly blown my mind. It seems to be suggesting the colouring changes within the same birds, usually based on general well being and mood and that the change can happen quickly (bloodflow?)

For comparison a definite lost youth with a definite long tail (super long) and a pink eye rim. Being lost would certainly make it stressed. This was in our garden last Summer.

 Did everyone else already know this and no one told me? I’m wondering if this means the birds visiting now are possibly younger, or at least young and carefree at heart. It’s the right time of year to feel that way - warmth, plenty of food etc. Anyway I found that very interesting.

A Scout has been here today too.

On the subject of eyelids, I’ve often got photos of the Great Spotted Woodpeckers where they eyes have looked opaque and this is why

In other news it’s HOT, very Hot, I think up to 36°C in London and it certainly feels like it here too, and the forecast ahead is warning of storms. 

The Government have given a Coronavirus Briefing and it doesn’t sound like great news. The easing of lockdown and the piloting of opening up to spectactor sports etc, is being dialled back. Brace yourselves folks, this Blog may be running much longer than I ever expected.

On the subject of heat, please think about the wildlife and birds in and around your garden, both in the day time and the evenings/night and pay attention to this advice, grabbed from the Dogs Trust on Twitter, sorry I cut it slightly too close.

Stay cool. Stay safe and enjoy the weekend however you can.

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