HEDGE SPARROW

ROBIN

The Transition Period

So times change,
                          So you change with the times. The difference is, a forced change is harder to take, than one of your own making.

Plan A, Re evaluate, Research and Learn.

Plan B, Evaluate, Conclude, and Improve.

Plan C, Implement, Improve and Enjoy.

Another Day By The River

River Traffic

A short video I made whilst spending a day fishing

 and watching the boats go by on the river Don

Dolphin Pod

I found a pod of dolphins today on Google Earth at,,,,, 33 59 17.02 S 151 15 32.09 E

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Google Earth

What would you do with 70,000 empty Coca Cola bottles?

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Parking spaces are hard to find in Holland

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A Day Spent Fishing On The River

A Day Spent On The Riverside

Having a Domestic

My highlight of today was a couple having a domestic in Tescos. As I was walking down an aisle in my local supermarket a little struggle caught my attention. A couple were having a domestic in public. The man took a item out of their trolley, she grabbed it and slammed it back in, the man shouted "OH F**K OFF YOU STUPID BITCH, IM GOING" and stormed off past me, chuntering to himself. She shouts down the aisle after him "YOURE GONNA  PAY FOR THIS YOU BAS***D, JUST YOU FCUKIN WAIT,, OH YES, YOU ARE GOING TO REALLY FCUKING PAY FOR THIS" She smiled at me sweetly as I walked past..... Someone is sleeping on the settee tonight,,, Lol

Dry Dock

Today's task for me was to bring back home daughter, with all her worldly possessions from Uni. She has just finished her first year at Leicester University and is now back home for the summer break. She will be in different accommodation next term, so her room had to be cleared out.

Now,,,, in the space of 12 months, her worldly  possessions, that took a hatch back car with back seats folded down to transport there, now need a hatch back car with seats folded down, a trailer and some skillful packing to bring back. I'm on the lookout for a Tardis for next year..

On a boaty note, which is another passion of mine, we had an hour or so to kill before daughters room was inspected and checked that everything was present and how it was before she moved in, by a Uni warden,. So off we went to "Dry Dock" a pub my daughter had found during her first year at Leicester. The photo isn't very good,, I didn't notice my camera was set to manual focus,,,,Doh,,,, It was a really nice place, we sat outside to have our drink, a nice feature in the inside was the boat part you can see, had a sliding roof that was open, and the sunlight poured in and lit up that area.  Ill take some better pics and update this post when I take daughter back after the summer break and have a bit more time.

Something unusual happened at waspville the other day

For me, it was just another morning, same routine, get up, cup of tea, a slice of toast, read emails, then check the garden. All was well, and how it was the day before. As I was just about to go back into my house, I glanced up at the bird box I have in the corner of my garden. The one with the wasps nest in it, Ive spoken about it in another post. Well,, today there was something definitely going on out of the ordinary. The entrance to the box was covered in wasps, and there was quite a frenzy going on. I am quite knowledgeable about wildlife, so my first thought was, the nest is being attacked by other wasps or hornets,,,,,,, I must get some photos of this.

I took a few photos, admittedly from a distance, but they didn't seem to be in war path mode, and didn't bother  me. so I moved closer to take some more, and upon closer inspection of the photos, and the area under the nest, there seemed to be no battle going on, no dead wasps or attackers had fallen under the nest. Ruling my first impression of what was going on out.

The interesting thing was when I had a close look at the photos was that there were several queen sized wasps around the entrance to the nest. This is June, from what Ive read, wasps are supposed to produce queen wasps in the Autumn (September, November) by feeding the developing grubs a different diet from worker grubs. Then the new queens fly off and mate with a male wasp from another nest, who dies shortly afterward, and the new queen wasp then hibernates over winter to start up another nest the following year.

My thoughts are, is this evolution in action????,  we had a very hard early start to winter here, it started in November with severe conditions that only the fittest for purpose would have survived. So those that did make it through that time would have to have been deep in hibernation before then, we then had quite a mild spring. So subsequently the ones that hibernated early on, would be active far earlier on than others of their kind when the winter had passed.

A Good Year For Rhubarb

My rhubarb has done well this year, the warmer spell we had in late March and April really brought it on. I don't really have to tend much to my rhubarb patch, I just cut away any dead stems and remove any that get too big and stringy. Then in Autumn I just clear away all the leaves and stems that are left and cover the crowns with  dry dead leaves that have fallen from the trees, and that's about all I do to it. It comes up every year no matter how hard the winter has been, it was down to minus 15 here this winter. Ive forgotten where I got the original root from, but it must be eighteen or twenty years ago, from a single root about an inch or so across it now covers maybe two or three  feet square without its stems and leaves, and double that when its stems and leaves are fully out.

All of this leads on to Homemade Rhubarb crumble, a simple pudding that is worth a mention in any ones book. A crispy, sweet crust combined with a the sour taste of the rhubarb filling. Now that's an early early summer treat summed up in a spoon full.

Wasps nest in nest box (Where Else)

I have a wasps nest in my garden this year, for around 12 or 13 years Blue Tits have nested every year in this particular box, but not this year. I wonder if many of them didn't make it through the bad winter

we had.

      

So its wasps, I should really say its a queen wasp, who's decided to take up residence this year and start building her nest in the vacant nest box.

  I personally don't mind them being there, the box is high up on a wall in a corner, so their flight path is well above my head if I'm in that part of the garden. They seem to fly straight for the woods at the back of my house without bothering to stop around in my garden, so its a quite amicable situation.If the nest was in the ground or low down and I didn't know about it and stepped on it, or had young children around to think about, then that would be a different matter.

 

Its quite interesting to watch their comings and goings. I had a video camera on them the other day, and when I slowed the clips down I was surprised to see how clumsy they can be when coming in for a landing at the nest box hole. Its was quite amusing when I saw the two wasps collide.

There is usually at least one, of the wasps on guard at the entrance to the nest, sometimes two or three.

It can be a little unnerving  taking photos of them close up, the camera is about five feet away from him here. He watches me carefully, as I watch him, they do have quite a menacing, alien looking face as he sits there, assessing the threat level I represent. I can imagine at this point hes on amber alert!!!!!, potential danger detected within comfort zone mode. They are not cute, but they have an attitude that deserves, nay,,, demands respect.

Starting At The Start

Well, here I am, starting at the start, I woke up this morning feeling a little at a loss as what to do today. Now thats not like me, Ive usually got my days planned out in advance, anyway, after toast and coffee and another coffee I read my Emails, nothing new there on that front, I caught up on a few of the Blogs I follow and "Ping" the light came on, the green for go button was pressed and the old brain cells (some would say cell) started to mobilise,,,,,,,,, "Why not???...... create my own Blog"  (Cue the sound of little grey cogs turning),,,,,(Slowly),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Ill start to do that today". So here I am, Starting at the start.