Weekly Chat, Sunday, March 21, 2010

Yikes !!!!!!!!!!!!  What have I missed? What nest is it with the pair of Ospreys in it  today???????????????

OK , Gotit!    Glaslyn. Phew !! But wonderful news. Now gotta go to work. Sigh

Greener scenery today on the Truckcam.  He doesnt know it, but we won't be watching him so much soon, when there are other things more interesting even than his view from the window.

Grey day here, but some more of my daffodils are now out, and the garden is waking up a bit. Two big magpies hopping around on the lawn this morning, looking for food but not brave enough to risk getting entangled in our apple tree to go on the feeders.

Hi everyone.

Okay then where do I start?  The begining.  Well that's that settled then.  Look I know it's a rotten joke, but the weather is considerably dreich just now.  Although I realise I'm not the only one who has weather that's in dire need of a dedreichulater.  Not sure about the spelling but I'm fairly certain that's a technical term.

In terms of local birds, I've just had a male siskin turn up a few minutes ago (4.20pm c).  So I managed to fire off a few pictures, which I'll post later if any turn out to be okay.  This wee fella decided to get tore into the niger seed, before flying away.  Then I looked out a few minutes later (around 4.30pm).  He's back feeding again, this time a collared dove decides to have an afternoon niger seed feed.  The siskin then perches on a nearby washing line, waits for a few moments, then wheeeeee!  He flies almost straight at the collared dove, giving the bigger bird the fright of his or her life.  Well, the collared dove didn't get knocked off the feeder, but It was amazing to watch this short but hugely entertaining spactacle.  Then after looking out a few minutes after that, I see the siskin, happily feeding from the niger seed feeder, once more.  Wonderful entertainment. :-)

Diane:  Your last post appeared just before my middle of the night one.  Great to hear 100% approval on long hair from American women on this site.  That's a brilliantly spooky Scrabble story.  Great atmosphere with the heavy fog. :-)

Annette:  I'm not sure if I'll manage to get much sleep once the osprey season is in full swing.  If you see any posts with gibberish in them, don't worry.  I've probably just fallen asleep at the lap-top. ;-)

Tiger:  Appologies for forgetting to say this in one of my last couple of posts.  I'm sorry to hear of the loss of your cyber friend.  Thanks for the EJ return stats.

patriciat:  Hope your weather clears up.  Quite right not to subject dogs to an obedience class during horrible weather.  That's an activity for sunny days.

Lindybird:  Glad you like the "kids on Christmas morning" description of the returning ospreys.  I'm reminded of a very old joke about a miser creating packaging for batteries, that bore the information: "Toy not included".

ChloeB:  Thanks for the LOTL videos link.  Brilliant viewing.

OG:  Not sure I could manage all the owl characteristics.  Great news on the chaffinch eating niger seed.  Hope all goes well with the blood tests.

auntie:  Wonderful news about the first Finish osprey sighting of 2010.

Sandy R Poulter:  Great news about the Derby peregrines and their first egg.

Alan:  Great point about ospreys using sporadic migration.  It makes a lot of sense when we think about it.

Margobird:  Brilliant point about the roller coaster of emotions that is the osprey season.

Everyone:  Thanks for the great posts, pics and links.  Sorry if I've missed anything.

All the best.



Paul.

Well, up from nap and no LG event of note; off to lunch with friend soon. Then to Island Feed & Seed to get some tree wrap for our orange tree, which has aphids and is attracting ants that manage to wiggle their way up the bark in spite of the Tanglefoot smeared across duct tape, which I now find out is Not Good for Trees; hence tree wrap mission. Will also get some organic oily spray to deal with aphids, at which point ants should lose interest.

Lindybird:  I will have Trucker cam and LG up at same time, but do hope trucker gets Western route soon.

Paul: You don't have to be up all night to type gibberish; I manage to do it wide awake.  :-)

Enjoy your lunch out, Annette.   You seem to have been singled out by the ants, both indoors and out.

Long hair for men?  Don't mind the length, or beards or moustaches, but can't stand it if they are not clean- the greasy look is  UGH!

Paul I like the idea of a 'dedreichulater' (I'm sure that spelling is rightt).  If you can patent one, it would sell like hot cakes here in N Ireland - we get 'dreich' for weather all too often.  Dogs didn't get soaked today - class was transferred to a barn, which was great.  Rain eased off for the non'trainers' to have an afternoon walk.

Feeling tired – had a confusing day.  Decided to get hard drives for both our PCs for backing up – OH has backed up his whole Local Drive content, but mine refuses to do that, so am backing up essential data only, and using some of the acres of extra space for our photo archive – which is also backed up on large memory sticks – this means I don’t have all the old photos on my main drive, which frees up space there and makes my normal backups faster – at least that’s the theory once I get used to doing it!!  Also got very confused trying to work out what someone wanted when they seemed to be asking if I would be willing to do something I thought I was already doing – I began to doubt whether I was really doing it - finally came to the conclusion that he had forgotten that I was already doing it and I was not losing my mind! (Wow! Can’t be falling apart if I can write a sentence like that!)

Thanks to all who have posted pics of Ospreys 2010!  Dibnlib – the Chaffinches were Heron’s – the Goldfinches were mine!  Thanks for your message on my page – will reply on yours.  Lindybird – Our Daffodils surprised us – I was just saying they were beginning to show bits of yellow in the buds, and suddenly there they were blooming!  Isn’t Spring amazing?!  Heron – hope you will post Siskin pictures, please – his challenge of the collared Dove sounds very entertaining.  Blood tests are regular, to check that medications and I are in balance – they would send for me if anything is wrong, so I don’t get results: no news is good news.  Annette – I hope you and Friend had a good lunch.  Hope you see off the Aphids and Ants!  Patriciat – pleased the Dogs were allowed to train under cover – and the owners too, of course!

At last the winter is over and I can look forward to the light mornings waiting for the first fish of the day to be brought in :) 

Hopefully there will be someone around to chat to at that time of the morning :)

& I hope that this posts OK - i had to click reply on the last posting.

Ginnie.

Evening/morning all:  Had nice lunch with friend; then some errands; then dinner where I had yet another chance to yell at politicians on telly; then out for lovely walk with another friend.  The air was warm tonight and heavy with the perfume of Pink Jasmine, which blooms in Spring; we have Star Jasmine around our house, which will flower in May/June and is equally heady.  Got the aphid spray and tree wrap;  let's hope the ants don't decide to try the house again once the orange tree loses appeal. We have to keep an eye on the hummingbird feeders too, since ants will come down from the roof and get into the feeder. Read the other day that you can hang the feeder by a bit of fishing line to keep the ants off.

OG: Sounds like a very confusing day, but you sounded quite lucid. Hope you got that person straightened out re what you're doing.

Ginnie: Hi there and welcome.  Depending on when you get up in the morning, and assuming you're in the UK, there's a good chance the U.S. contingent might be around to chat for a minute before we fall into bed.  Diane is in Indiana; Caerann is in Chicago; Gary, when he has the chance to post, is in Connecticut, and I'm in Santa Barbara, California.  I'm 8 hours behind the UK (or will be when your clocks go forward - this weekend I think?)   Wattle and Aquilareen are in Australia: Wattle is outside Sydney and Aquilareen is in Adelaide and are way ahead of all of us.

Anyway, off to the rose garden in the morning and then home to see if anyone we know has shown up at LG!

Night all!