Hi All:
jsb: At the end of the previous Weekly Chat are two responses to your posting about the birds with French accents. One is from me and not especially profound. The other is from Diane, and reads as follows : Lovely article. I always have two pairs of house wrens (known as jenny wrens here) who return about the same time in the spring. Even though both females are house wrens, I can always tell which bird is singing, no matter where they are. I don't know whether the slight difference is because they winter in different regions or because individual wrens have distinct sounds. I always put up houses for them, but, this year, one pair decided that it would be more fun to nest in the nook above my propane gas tank, where the dials and controls are. So I had to fiercely guard the nest from the gas company employees who periodically check the gas levels. The gas company guys think I'm looney but they didn't dare to defy me and bother the wrens!
Everyone: AQ posted this one: Adelaide 10.50 am 12 C. Pumpkin soup for lunch thanks to friend giving me 2 large butternuts. Today is the Bay to Birdwood Classic for cars 1956-1977. Once upon a time they left from Glenelg (the Bay), but lack of space means they now leave from West Beach (2 km north). They travel about 70 km (44 miles) to Birdwood in the Adelaide Hills where there is a Motor Museum. Next year is the run for the Vintage cars (pre-1956). A picnic day. A bit chilly today but not as chilly as Wattle's.
And Teresa had this tip: If you delete something by mistake it is worth holding the Ctrl key down and clicking on Z. In lots of instances it undoes your last action - not always though but still worth a try.
AQ and Teresa: Hope it was okay to copy and paste your comments on this page - didn't want anyone to miss them.
Auntie: Good grief. Below zero in September? Do people in your latitude use a sunlamp during the winter months to deal with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) brought on by lack of sunshine?
George/Anyone: Was Scotland completely forested in the old days? I know they're trying to bring back some of the original trees, but never heard where the old ones went. Here, in Northen California, entire hillsides were stripped of trees to build houses (mostly in San Francisco). The early settles imported lots of Australian blue eucalyptus, thinking that would be a good wood tree, but apparently it wasn't (pretty, but not native).
Annette : Re Scotland deforestation try this link:
http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/humanimpacts/deforestation.html
Hello Annette, well there used to be wolves in Scotland so I would think so. Someone who will remain nameless wants to bring back bears and wolves to Scotland. Insanity, I say, Moose are already being introduced (and Beavers but I really don't know what I think about beavers)- - I don't want moose.
Is anyone else having problems logging on to Pete's Pond site??? Firefox keeps crashing when I try to access the video. Guess I'll try IE but don't know the URL and it's dispappeared out of my Bookmarks.
Cirrus, I defenetly don`t recommend introducing moose there. We have those here (and yes, they belong here), and lots of lives are lost every year in car accidents caused by moose. I myself once almost had one when riding by my bike (two young moose and very early summer morning). And for petes sake, I live in a town.
my photos in flickr
Annette, the subzeroes are only by night time, it still goes around 10C during the day. I think that there must be something in our nothern genes that helps to cope the cold and dark. But somepeople do have problems with SAD, and there are brightlightlamps (tablemodels) in the stores. I don`t get depressed in winter (although I don`t like that time of a year), but I defenetly need much more sleep and my "energylevel" is lower in winter.
Is there a quick way to get to the latest page here? Or do you have to go through them all over and over again? Help!!
Everything in life is speaking in spite of its apparent silence.
Alan: Many thanks for that very interesting link re Scotland's forests. Not as simple to figure out as I thought, nor to "solve"; lots of variables at work. I've taken landscaping classes here, and our teacher points out that yes, plants from Australia and South Africa do very well in SoCal and are drought tolerant, but they don't necessarily work as well for our native bugs and other garden inhabitants. Such a lot to learn.
Cirrus: Apparently the Pete's Pond cam isn't panning right now. If you go to their Facebook page, there's a note under Discussions by a Pete's Pond person called Afke (he/she signs the blogs although the post heading reads "National Geographical Critter Cam, etc." ) indicates some problem, also that Afke is off on a mongoose expedition or something. Not sure, but their Facebook page is very active and the comments aren't too disimilar from ours when our webcam goes down!)
Tish said: Is there a quick way to get to the latest page here? Or do you have to go through them all over and over again? Help!!
Tish: I go to http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/groups/lochgartenospreys/default.aspx, (I bookmark it) then click "Latest Post" under the appropriate heading. The pages are numbered at the bottom, but only seem to work in 5-page increments, which is slow...
New blog from alice.
You beat me by a minute Alan - thanks!