Evening/Morning all: This week should bring more interesting news about Mallachie. Check the last few entries of the previous Weekly Chat for another photo of Queenie and other input from bloggers!
Hope you all got your clocks, microwaves, coffee pots, TVs, etc., organized for the next six months. And when did BST replace GMT, at least in the summer. In the US, standard and daylight savings time have had a long and fascinating (and apparently often confusing) history, given that we have three times zones for the contiguous states. DST is another matter, with most states changing but some not, but at least we don't have 30 minute increments like they do in Australia!
TerryM: The GE Help window is pretty clear re tours. I do recall that it took several "clicks" to get the thing started. Other folks commented on that and I had the same experience in the beginning but then it was okay. I tried to copy and paste some of the info onto your page, but it included boxes with images and they didn't copy. I'm sure other folks will have more helpful info. Good luck. Too bad lovely Queenie isn't around any more. When my daughter and I were away the other week, we stayed at a place which is a favorite "drop off" spot for folks wanting to "lose" cats. They had three cats when we were there, which hung around the garden entrance to the dining room waiting to be fed (by the staff). One night, the cats were served prime rib, all nicely chopped up for easy digestion!!!!
Alan: So. Are you treating us all to a trip to Loch Garten next year with your lottery winnings or will we be depending on the webcam again? :-)
Gary: Dying to hear about your English food outing (what was it really like?)
OG: We grow tomatoes outside here but my friends who do often fence them and other veggies in to keep various critters, including deer, from snacking on them; not to mention snails. My sister has expressed some frustration with EU rules - specifically not being able to buy French cheese off a market stall (I think that was it). Is following EU rules a bore or do you think it's generally for the good?
Well this has been a busier day than yesterday on the forum. Well done those who have been for interesting walks and seen their bathrooms move on, bad luck to those feeling poorly.
Caerann - I am now watching cranes and penguins (both there just now). We're used to it being light late here, in the summer anyway, my OH is sometimes gardening at 10.30 pm, and in June/July the sky is lightish all night. Even lighter in Scotland and Finland of course. Thanks for the redwoods link too, I have bookmarked it for later. At my school there were several girls called Karen but one of them pronounced it Care-ann, perhaps her parents didn't know how to spell it in a gaelic way. I heard of a child called Siobhan but her parents pronounced it See-oh-ban...
Annette - instruction booklets in only three languages, lucky you! Ours have to have all the languages in the EU plus Arabic, Japanese and maybe more.
OG - We saw the Red Arrows along the A69 once too! Amazing (but dangerous to watch while driving - like geese).
Terry in Cumbria
Wow ...been out most of the day and there's loads of interesting chat to catch up on ... yesterday was so quiet on here ... thanks everyone ..and glad the poorly people are feeling a bit better!
OG - I too have seen the Red Arrows along the A69 ... and its great to see them roaring along the coast and over St Mary's Island at Whitley Bay after the Great North Run!
Joan - avid bird and nature watcher in Northumberland!
Index Thread
As remarked, much busier day on here than yesterday - and what a mix of topics we discuss!
Daughter safely fetched - lots of news shared. Just going to have one each of my muffins made this morning, then getting to bed early tonight - all rather tired. Might go out for a while on a goose watch and risk leaving tiling man for a couple of hours tomorrow - unless it pours with rain.
Ospreys Rule OK, but Goldfinches come a close second!
Annette -forgot to say, I am imagining you in those trademark sunglasses now!
Just watched the programme on BBC2 mentioned earlier, about the wild black bears in Minnesota. Very moving, how the chap involved had studied them for over 40 years and knew a lot of them by name. Astounded to find that on the one hand, people were prepared to go to great lengths to find out more about the bears, yet other people wanted nothing more than to get out a gun and shoot these placid creatures. A very thought provoking programme: try to see it sometime if you can. It was called 'Natural World' and the biologist was named Lynn Rogers.
Have just found the website for the above study; its : www.bearstudy.org
and has a Nat. Geographic bit of film for you to watch, showing Lynn and his favourite bear, June, with her cubs.
Ooh, thanks for that link to the Blackbears, Lindybird!
Annette: In the gate fold I counted 4 people in the redwood with 1 at the base. Brave people, climbing up that big old tree!
The crane migration field journal, which is extremely interesting to read, btw is here:
http://www.operationmigration.org/Field_Journal.html
You can link up to the crane cam on that page also, that's when they have it up and running that is, and how do they find the time to set up cameras when they're constantly rounding up wayward birds I wonder.
TerryM said with the Penguins and Cranes it certainly helps pass the time until we're watching Ospreys again. Once the Cranes are settled it should be getting time for the Bald Eagle and Owl cams to go live so we can watch birds (or Fallow Deer in the N.F.) all year round. As Alan says, "FAB!" =O)
It was late in the afternoon. I had finished preparing vegies for tea. Armed with spade and wee bucket of scraps, I cross the back lawn to bury peelings around my vegie patch. The blackbirds scatter from their foraging in the mulch. Along the side fence is the pile where I toss weeds so they can turn into compost. Towards the corner is a couple of old tree stumps and the pile of tree dahlia stalks slowly disintegrating. The latter eventually produce fibres very popular with nest-makers. I dig my small hole, eying warily the piles against the fence. I have had 3 rather too close experiences with snakes in my lifetime and the piles look as if they could harbour dangerous beasts. The dry stalks rustle. I freeze. No, it can’t be a blackbird under there. I slowly back away. Go inside and report to Himself that there is "something in the compost heap". He is interested enough to check and immediately spots the culprit. I see a tail and a leg disappear beneath a log. Now I must take you back to December last year when I was looking out the kitchen window and saw a lizard walking across the lawn. Himself rushed out with camera and snapped it before it disappeared into the shrubbery. It was identified as an eastern blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides scincoides). Himslf’s pic can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/delphinus2007/3136441059/
. We hadn’t seen it since. Well, now we know it is resident in our back garden. I have just read about them. They are known as blue-tongues because their tongue ranges from bright to dark blue, and they have a habit of displaying it prominently and hissing loudly when disturbed. Yikes, it will be scary when it grows. . . 30-60 cms, lives up to 30 years. I hope it isn’t a female – they give birth to live young, 6 up to a record 20 !!!! Popular as pets and can be fed raw egg, mince meat, soft cat or dog food, live snails, slugs, worms, insects (like crickets), non-citrus fruit (especially ripe banana), flowers (e.g., dandelions), raw kangaroo meat, and chicken. Hm, hope it doesn’t like tomatoes, spinach, beetroot . . .
Diane, Auntie, Margobird – I hope you are feeling much better now. Can I send you some sunshine? We have plenty to spare. It is 30 C already and only 1 pm.
Evening all. Weather forecaster quite excited this evening over the likelihood of overnight frost in the Santa Ynez Valley and temps in the mid-30s (around 3 C?) here at the coast, the result of the Jet Stream whipping down the West Coast from Canada.
TerryM: I wear clip-on sunglasses that fit, not wonderfully well, over my regular glasses. Not trendy or mysterious at all. And certainly nothing Ms. Wintour would be caught dead wearing!
Caerann: Thanks for reposting the crane link. I've bookmarked it. I'd also counted four people in the redwood tree and one on the ground, but just found a fifth person up the tree!
AQ; The Nat. Geo, which is getting a lot of mentions in this week's posts, has an article on prehistoric crocs/alligators and their evolution ( I wouldn't want to see that critter in your garden get too large.) and some amazing photos from the UK of a kingfisher after minnows.