"Odds & Sods" (old version) - please add to the new thread 2020 instead !

May I say she is (surprising for the bird world) prettier than he is:-)

What a lovely sight Alan and sound probably too when the Whooper Swans flew over.

Great captures Alan. Nice flight shots too:-)

Very nice pictures taken the last few days Alan.

This is a picture a member of my facebook group took the other day just wondering if anyone else has seen this before, you can see the teeth marks on the trunk.

Hi Jim, the squirrels have to constantly file down their teeth which continue to grow, hence they gnaw into the bark making deep gouging marks - they will strip bark off and gnaw on the wood,  they are destructive little devils, especially to ancient woodland and older trees :(

Thank you Hazel, I thought it was eating it :)

My sister in law (who is much younger than Mrs A) had a Hamster when she was a wee girl. Their teeth apparently also grow constantly and when they got too long we had to take it to the Vet to have them trimmed. He used a small set of snips (exactly the same as the ones I use to trim my guitar strings) and just lifted the Hamster’s top lip and snipped the teeth to a more reasonable length. It cost a small fortune and I was thinking, "I could have done that for free".!! Not that I would have of course, but being a Scot it did annoy me for a wee while.!!
I just had to get that off my chest… !! :-)

Talking of hamsters, my cousin's young son kept pestering for a pet hamster so the day before his birthday my cousin went to the pet shop, purchased said hamster which he then had to keep secret till the next day. He asked for the hamster to be put into a secure box (shop assistant put it in a double cardboard box) and it was left overnight in the garage with some straw bedding, water, etc.... Next morning ….. hamster nowhere to be seen, cousin searching the whole car and garage for missing critter after seeing large hole in the cardboard box. He finally had to give his son a toy for his birthday and thought no more of it. A week later his car broke down ………. garage diagnosed problem with the electric cables under the bonnet and he received a bill (Mercedes) for almost £3,000 ………. also found was one electrocuted hamster which had apparently chewed through the two boxes, disappeared under one of the foot pedals and into the engine compartment happily chewing away at the wiring causing very extensive damage !!! Cousin said, good job it was already dead as he would have marmalised it himself LOL