Weekly Chat, Sunday August 29, 2010

Now to continue with Birds of Prey photos from our day out – starting with another picture of Bungle the Bataleur Eagle.  Horrible to think of what he has been through before being smuggled into the UK, having his wings broken and damaged.  Apparently, in some parts, they are kept captive as a talisman against snakes – it’s believed that having a “Snake Eagle” in the village keeps them away.  How could anyone want to harm this:

Here is another BoP, this time from across the Pond.  Pedro, the Caracara, is very intelligent and loves to play and to have his neck tickled.  The trainer gave him a small plastic tub which had a tiny amount of food left in.  He played with it a while, then succeeded in removing the lid.  

Love the fluffy pantaloons:

Next time, sheep – after all it was an agricultural show!

Morning all ... sun is shining now, but cold and windy, and we had some very heavy showers earlier.

OG - sounds like the show was good, thanks for pics.... especially Pedro and his fluffy pantaloons!!! When my parents lived in Cumbria we used to visit Newcastleton as a friend of theirs lived there. My dad was the minister at the little United Reformed Church at Bewcastle ... services were once a month in the afternoon, so he was able to combine it with his church in Carlisle!

AQ - lovely pic to remind us of Lizarda the skink!

Brenda H - aahhh ... the leafblowers ... that was so funny last year!!!

margobird - you must be getting so excited about your holiday to Cornwall ... and so easy to pack every type of clothing when you go by car!

Heather B - so pleased you daughter got the all-clear ... and what a lovely way to celebrate with a meal!

I remember hearing cicadas in the south of Italy ... the first time I heard them one afternoon, I thought someone was using a chainsaw .... the noise was almost unbearable!

Thanks to everyone for interesting chat etc

Take care

Addition:  Just read back on the end of the last week's 'Chat'  -   Heather-  so very glad that you had such a nice lunch out to celebrate - with good reason, too.

Diane:  Thanks for links to various noisy critters- will listen to them in a bit when I have a minute.

OG:  Your day out sounded great - nice that you enjoyed it & had reasonable weather, too.

Paul/Heron:  My thanks also to you for such a lot of fun in your posts this summer - we do enjoy a smile to make the day go around!

All 'New'  posters:  Welcome!  Hope you will join with us.

Morning All.  Did you all resist having a look at the nest this morning? I must confess, I still had to have a look !

 Dry but windy and cool here. Heavy showers this afternoon.

I had a look at the Main page and can never understand why it becomes so personal. Surely people can discuss issues without insulting one another. I only look when there is an update to read.

Oh tells me we should leave, as we are off out for lunch. Speak later.

I won’t bore you with all the different breeds of sheep, but here are a few to show you that we did visit the pens.  This one was a real poser:

This one was very timid, and it took me a long time of gentle talking (* see below) to gain its trust for a photo:

This photo doesn’t really do justice to this Jacobs Ram – he was rather interested in the sheep in the next pen:

* I talk to most of the animals, and had a wonderful conversation with a Bantam Cockerel in what used to be called “the Fur and Feather marquee” – and wonderful memories of accompanying Dad and Uncle when they were showing Rabbits and later Uncle’s Budgies (and my own pet Budgie).  I don’t know what the cockerel or I was saying, but he seemed to know – OH was just embarrassed that I was talking Chicken!

Hi everyone.

Weather's quite nice is my neck of the woods albeit a wee bit windy.  Which can be a bit of a pain in the (c'mon now Paul think of something polite.) hind quarters, when your having to keep an eye out for flying bird table trays.  Thankfully they stayed grounded.  I've tried to get all the Starlings to line up on the phoneline and wait until I've acurately counted them for the BTO GBW but alas they don't perch long enough and flew about, flutter, and do as Starlings do.  This morning's bird bath performance was brilliant entertainment.  Saw a Greenfinch on the nyger seed a wee while ago.  Had to be a male because he was like a cartoon of a Greenfinch.

Having a quickish peek at the LG nest just now and the weather up there is quite changeable and rough.  Ospreys are most certainly wise creatures.  No "Put a wee hot water bottle on and turn the heating up, EJ.  My back's done in wi' this cold." for them.  :-)

Annette: I know exactly what you mean about not having to worry about missing fish deliveries and other nest activities for a while.  You deserve a rest as you do a great job of keeping all us people in the LG time zone or nearby informed by what happened during the night. 

Diane:  Thanks for all the webcam links you posted.  Can't get enough of them.  Especially thanks for the cicadas video.  Fascinating creatures and perhaps not conventionally beautiful but lovely in their own cicada like way.

JenW:  Great to have you here.  To be honest I love reading the blogs on the main page and for the most part the comment posts are good.  Sadly though it can sometimes get a bit too heated in terms of arguments.  That's why I tend to post mostly on the Weekly and the Daily Updates.

AQ:  Fascinating and brilliantly informative info about the "City of Adelaide".  Sad to hear a ship with such an important part in Aussie history has been rotting away.  I must research to see if she was built on the Clyde.

margobird:  The strange melancholy will quickly pass.  Especially when it gets to the stage when we're all frantically trying to remember the various methods of safely and considerately de ice bird baths.  I must confess to split knuckles on one or two occasions.  Ouch!  You should've seen the pieces of ice though. LOL

OG:  I don't mind if people call me Paul, Heron, or Heron77 on here :-)  Honestly I've been called worse in my career.  Sadly I think I'll have to call a halt to the arm flapping experiments for now.  Too many people stand too close.  LOL

Thanks for all the stunng pictures everyone.  Brilliant as per usual. :-)


Paul.

I’m so glad I decided to look through last Friday’s DU to see Alicat’s mug pic because I found the link to the Wild Aperture photos, which are truly stunning, thanks to Sarah. And Lindy’s poem too, normally DU is too much to catch up on when you’ve been away so I consider myself lucky to have called in.

Annette – enjoying your trip description, empty roads sound good on that long distance.  Do you ever break down? (The car, I mean LOL)  Do you have a rescue service, apart from Thunderbirds of course?  Glad you got home ok but you still sound tired, take it easy.

Auntie – thanks for osprey pond cam.  I really think I should sort out my Favourites this winter...

DjoanS – glad you’re enjoying your new kitchen and your OH is enjoying the fruits of your labours!  Glad to see you say he is good too.  Watch out or he’ll be getting you a new vacuum cleaner next LOL.

Diane/Lynette – there’s also Truck Dude http://www.bigrigtruckcam.com/

Shetland various (including puffins) http://www.shetland.org/60NTV/index.html#

South Georgia http://www.sgisland.gs/index.php/%28h%29South_Georgia_webcam?useskin

Cranes in USA http://www.operationmigration.org/crane-cam.html

Storks in Germany http://storchennest-hoechstadt.de/live-cam

Store Mosse National Park, Sweden http://www.webbkameror.se/djurkameror/storemosse/ (this was a carcass-cam last winter)

Smithsonian National Zoo (was Andean bears but they’re not on a cam at the moment, you can see pics here) http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Amazonia/Exhibit/AndeanBears/March2010cubs.cfm

Crumbs, did we really have time to watch all those last year?

OG – perhaps you could keep a couple of hens and pass them on to me when they stop producing!  We often buy “rescue” hens that are a couple of years old, it’s heart-warming to see them step out into the sunshine and open sky and gradually realise that they are meant to be outside, scratching around.  They go on to give us two or three years of egg laying before going into retirement.  We have been replacing hens recently because the last lot of rescue hens were the same age and so all dying off over this summer.  What a handsome bird Bungle is, don’t know how people can think of smuggling wildlife in.  Pedro is handsome too.

Brenda – are we into the leaf-blowing season already? I expect Gary will be back here with us soon...

Lindy – Glad you enjoyed Toy Story 3, I recently saw 2 on tv and thought it was as good as the first (unusual in a sequel).  I probably won’t go to see it at the cinema though as I feel so silly crying when all those children are there!

Heather – Hope your OH allowed you some greengages too, I think they are the nicest garden fruit.  I picked ours last Monday, ate some and turned the rest into jam.  Not like rasps and strawbs where they ripen over several weeks, I have to pick them all at once so the wasps don’t get them.  One year we’re pretty sure a fox had been getting some too, but I can’t remember why we thought that now, maybe green fox poo?

Margo – have a lovely time in Cornwall, hope the toilet will be ok without you to watch over it!

My flute weekend was brilliant but exhausting, so much talent to listen to, particularly young people from Russia, Hungary, Korea.

Hello to all

It felt really strange today, with no Daily page to read, but hey ho, how many days is it now ?207!

OG - Thank you for the pictures, Bungle looking you straight in the eye-------

Margobird, have I remembered correctly, its the 31st that you leave for Cornwall? Think of me when you are eating a Cornish pasty. I have made them all my adult life - maybe a Devon version - but the ones from a good pasty shop are a different taste experience again, I think and I could eat one Right Now.  My children still talk about 'beaching' (does anyone use that expression these days, I wonder) and remember the pasties.

Annette - Good to see that you are back home and back on form. That was a long journey in a short time. I have a vision of you walking around with each eye looking in a different direction-----

Diane, Like others, I am going to listen to the critters in a wee while.

Lindybird/Joan - Sorry you have rain, its dry up here at the minute, but only just 10 degrees c when we got up this morning. Windy and cold outside. Ospreys know best, I think.

AQ - Its wonderful that the City of Adelaide is going to be restored, I didn't realise that she and the Cutty Sark were the only two clippers left. Its pretty bad that she has been left to rot like that. Paul - Thats a great idea to research her. I wonder if that was her original name. No doubt you will tell us in due course.

My OH has gone to a housing exhibition with eldest daughter and family today. I had a date with an ironing pile and now, the Weekly page. Housing exhibitions would only make me wish that my bank balance matched my aspirations :-))) Speaking of which, dentist tomorrow. OH got his checkup plus scale and polish last week and got a nasty surprise when he saw the bill.

Hi All,

As I didn't post this on the last Daily Update, can I say a special thank you to all those who kept the Updates running through the season, and captured and posted so many great screen shots, especially the "out of hours" crew.

A little postscript to the season - I reckon I've discovered what Chicks 1 & 2 were due to be called, before the ringing and tagging were called off. I was answering a query on the main forum about the Lake District tracking, and happened to do a Search on "osprey satellite tracking".

In the list of results, the link to the LG Tracking page has a one-line summary under it which says:       "Follow Aspen and Willow, two osprey chicks from Loch Garten in Scotland, on their first migration". If you click on the link, the Tracking page is still headed "Mallachie & Rothes" - obviously one was changed (or changed back) but not the other. So the theme was trees - I wonder what Titch was due to be called.