'FORUM FRIENDS, WILDLIFE-FROM-WHEREVER' (Off-season, all cams off at Loch Garten)

Haud ma wheesht, usually said to someone else as "haud yer wheesht". There probably isn't a literal translation but "hold your tongue" would be pretty close or as Korky says more succinctly, shut up. Many a bairn has been told to "haud yer wheesht or I'll gie ye a skelp". Not now of course that smacking a child is illegal in Scotland. Ian

Thanks, Korky and Ian, for the translation--sorry but English (of a sort!) is my only language apart from a few phrases in German and Spanish. Skelp is a smack? Sounds more like "I'll scalp you!" or "I'll take your scalp!"--something which apparently usually happened when the aim was to murder the intended victim...namely, not at all nice behaviour. Happy to learn that a word looking very much like 'scalp' simply means smack--usually not a lethal thing, although much to be discouraged these days, law or no law.

You needn't shut up, Korky, love your contributions and everyone gets a bit confused now and then! And it is the right time of year for using gin as an excuse for a lot of things! Bring on the sloe gin. We are not big drinkers but enjoyed the tour we had at Plymouth Gin many years ago--saw all of the equipment, got to smell and taste the non-gin ingredients one by one, and then had a tiny glass of the gin end product. Mr GB makes Sloe gin himself, but it takes ages for us to drink it.

Scylla, Yes, it would be nice if we could ask what the cake was/is. I speculate it was leftover dough of some description, leftover from Christmas baking, possibly with additions for the birds. Imagine we will never know.

Well I didn't get that zzzzzzzz, got a new lease of wakefulness  

Boreal Ontario

30 December

Snow fell overnight so the birds (first the Western Meadowlark) arrived to a barren feeder.  Here are samples of all the birds who visited up to noonish, showing who did what:

I know I am overly focused on this Canadian feeder but, apart from its charming and new-to-us-this-season visitors, its layout and size make it less difficult to navigate than, for example, the Arne and Tennessee cams.  Such a pity we haven't had the LG feeder back yet - it may have been fast and furious but at least it was a quite-close view.

In the afternoon 2 Blue Jays clashed (short slomo):

The Western Meadowlark had 3 feeds during the afternoon, I won't bore you with yet more video - I do love that bird but it's not exactly acrobatic...

About to leave @ 17:06:

31 December

First and second birds in:

10:20 refurb:

Makov Rescue Station

Last night the hare came and observed the Pond scene for a minute:

One wonders what would happen if a third swan needed sanctuary?  Maybe they've already had to reject the needy   (Looking on the unbright side, as usual.)

The White Stork came closer than usual but one's hands were tied by a misty blob in the midde of the picture:

I didn't know when I did the above snap that later it came along and ate some (I'm guessing) day-old chicks, behaving somewhat as programmed for predating live prey:

This is the aftermath of a blurred drama, when a female GSW pounced into a group of feeding sparrows and knocked over the dripping pot - I don't know if anyone was hurt.

Gettysburg

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, this was afternoon, I should have snapped the more populous morning.  (I "felt" that the cam picture was upgraded or improved in some way a few days ago.)

Aww... the next morning:

That turned out to be cute so here's a little vid - but I don't have the fly-in because it was right at the start of a new download:

G'night!

It was so slow getting into the RF box... I don't know how long since I gave up and went off somewhere else, I just came back and found the RF ready and waiting but that's all I've got to say

I'll have a nap and hope for better/faster things later :-*

A really good selections of videos for us, thank you Scylla. And wonderful framed stills

Boreal Ontario

The feeder was refilled before any birds whatsoever had visited.

Then all the usuals:

The Blue Jays soon made off with all the peanuts:

I couldn't get a better shot of the Downy Woodpecker:

The little ones were also in 'n out, plus 3 Pine Grosbeaks foraged on the usual patch of snowy ground.

I'm just doing the Ruffed Grouse but need a nap.

Editing in the Ruffed Grouse, it stayed nearly 10 minutes:

Well, I'll put in my two cents and say that to me, it looked like a leftover seeded bagel, that was torn into pieces...

Unknown said:

it is still possible the thing, whatever it is, contains lots of seeds which the birds might like.

Unknown said:

I'll put in my two cents

Recapping to when the "cake" was whole and the Crow stole it - you can see it's quite heavy:

Its what my mum would pass off as a "Rock" cake. Always too heavy to feed to the birds.