At the bird table

 I decided to change my font today.  I always used to use this one when writing emails with Outlook Express.  Now that I use Yahoo I can’t get this font on it, which makes my emails look very boring.  You must let me know what you think of this style.  Is it easy to read, or do you prefer the old way? 

Anyway I thought I’d put in a couple of pictures today of two of the visitors to my bird table which is now standing on my balcony so I can see it through the French windows!  This LBJ - little brown job –  is a female house sparrow.  The male, below, courtesy of Jan from the Czech Republic, has a dark grey bib and cheeks, and a darker head. Actually I think she’s the prettier of the two!

They say sparrows are decreasing in number, but there are plenty of them around Peebles.  I have about three pairs that come to the hanging feeders, and I know there are quite a few at my neighbour’s place up the steps, and the other day when visiting Ailsa of the Gardening group, we watched several  flitting from feeder to feeder in her garden – she has these squirrel proof feeders with a wire cage around to allow the birds a bit of safety and more food because the squirrels can’t get at it!  Well, suddenly we realised that one of the sparrows was feeding its little fledglings on the lawn.  She was collecting food from the feeders and bringing it down to the babies. 

Boy, can they open their tiny beaks wide!   I wished I had had my camera because usually it goes everywhere with me, but I had left it at home recharging its battery!  So of course when three tiny fledglings lined up on the grass for a feed, beaks open so wide you’d think they could get another sparrow in there, and mum fed each of them in turn, I was spitting tacks!  A photo would have been wonderful to have! And guess what? It wasn’t until I reached home that I realised that my mobile phone had been in my pocket the whole time! It has quite a good camera in it! Oh well! C’est la vie!!!  I can’t show it to you, but I have the memory of it!

So, this little guy is a bluetit!  Could be a little girl instead of a guy, for all I know.  They both look the same, and very cute in yellow and blue with their white-ish faces and black eye masks.    I get great tits at the feeders too, a bit larger and with black caps.  They have a dark stripe down their yellow front, which is reckoned to be a sign of aggression.  The wider the stripe the more fearful the other great tits are of them!  (Another of Jan’s photos!)

(This is a photo by Ian Ross) I haven’t seen my chaffinches too much for a while.  Now they’re pretty!  Well, the male is brighter and more coloured than the female. 

She’s quite drab – another LBJ!   (Photo from Gerd Rossen.) The chaffies always announced their arrival with a chee-eeeep, before settling in for a feed!  I had a few of them around, but they must be after better things right now!

What I am getting though are the pigeons and crows, even muckle great rooks!  The crows can do a pretty good job of hanging upside down from the feeders and devouring the fat balls, peanuts and seeds, and the pigeons try their best to land on the bird table with its protective roof, but since I’ve wrapped thin wire round the sides only the small birds can get in.  There’s a pair of blackbirds hop in there quite the thing, and they’re the biggest of our garden birds. The male has such glossy black plumage and that right yellow beak really stands out, as does the bright ring around that dark dark eye.

(Both photos taken by Gerd Rossen)

This is Mrs Blackie, only she’s brown and a bit speckedly in front.  The young blackies are brown too, though the males can soon be identified by their yellow beaks.  They are beautiful birds.  Sing beautifully too, and in autumn at dusk they deliver their loud sharp scolding mixture betwen a shriek and a cheep, which I always associate with the season and bonfires!!!  Let’s not wish summer away though!  I see the swallows are flying high tonight!  That’s a good sign!  The bugs must be higher in the air, the pressure not keeping them low down.  Good weather in store, it would seem! 

 This time last year I was in Kintyre where Linda and Ken had a swallow nest in one of their outhouses.  I spent ages watching five little heads peering over the edge of the mud nest.  It wasn’t long before they were off and flying!

Well, I have one last photo now, taken by Barbara Furphy,one of the members of our photographic group.  She took this gorgeous photo of a robin in her garden last winter, so although I haven’t had the robin at my bird table recently I’m going to show you this one!

Talk again soon.

Stirling Provincial Mod

The choir went up to Stirling last weekend to compete in the little Mod there!  Lots of places hold provincial Mods and it’s up to the individual choirs which ones they attend!  We do Stirling and Mull, and of course the National Mod in October – this year in Stornoway, in the Western Isles. 

Anyway the Stirling Mod was a wee mod, with only a handful of choirs competing.  I’m not sure how many individual singers were competing in competitions, but Ceitidh (Katie)  won a cup, as did Linn.  This is Ceitidh looking very happy with herself!  Ceitidh used to sing with the choir when she lived in Edinburgh, but as she has now moved to Inverness she has become a part time member of the choir, singing with us when she can. What’s more, she brings her mum and grandad along too sometimes!!!  We made history at the National Mod last year having three generations of the same family in the choir!  Barbara, her mum, sang with us at Stirling.  

Here we are, on stage in the ballroom at the Golden Lion Hotel, doing our bit!  Sad to say, we didn’t win!  When the GGs (Glasgow Gaelic Choir) and Cumbernauld are around, they win the honours!  However we did OK!  Didn’t disgrace ourselves at all – and we enjoyed it!  I put this photo into a scrapbook page, using a kit that my friend Mary designed. 

The ballroom was rather nice.  You can get an idea of it from this picture of the Stirling choir from behind a painted pillar – yes, it does look like marble but it isn’t!  The hotel, pictured at the beginning, dates back to 1786, so I can imagine this was the scene of many a Georgian assembly – just think of  Scottish Elizabeth Bennets and Mr D’Arcy’s et al,  dancing their contredanses – country dances - and quadrilles!

After the competitions some of us walked up the road and round the corner to a nice little Italian restaurant where we had an excellent meal, a few glasses of vino and an occasional impromptu sing – in Gaelic rather than Italian – before returning to the ballroom for the end of Mod ceilidh (kayli), where dancing and singing was the order of the evening.

 

 

The few final stragglers from the choir caught the last train back to Edinburgh, some not managing to stay awake during the journey, and made our way home from Waverley Station, round about midnight.  I stayed overnight at Jackie’s  - our choir conductor’s - as the last bus to Peebles had long gone…… and despite the copious amounts of wine and whisky drunk during the previous night, there were no headaches  in the morning as we tucked into bacon rolls and mugs of tea for breakfast.  

Talk again soon.

Celtic festival

I really must get caught up on some blog entries!  The first thing I was going to write about was the Celtic Festival held at Newbattle Abbey, not far from Edinburgh.  All sorts of activities had been organised celebrating Celtic traditions.  Deirdre did a taster workshop in Gaelic, using the  Ulpan method we used in our two terms of lessons; I attended a talk on the Scots language – NOT a slang English, but a language even older than English.  There were dance workshops in Breton, Irish

and Scottish dancing;

 

 

 

0pportunities to listen to music and join in the singing of different styles of Scottish songs.  

 

There were face-painting  and Celtic handicrafts for the kids;

 

 

 

 

woodland walks for anyone who wanted a bit of quiet ; food tents, icecream vans, everyone was   catered for, and I think everyone enjoyed a very pleasant and happy day.  If I hadn’t been on duty as a steward I’d have photographed some of the other activities, but despite being at my designated posts during the day I thoroughly enjoyed things too.   Oh, this is another volunteer steward, who insisted on dressing up as the Newbattle  Abbey token monk!

 

Talk again soon.

Garden centre

There is so much to catch up on!  I was almost caught up when I posted my last entry and started this one, but time has whizzed by again – I just seem to have been so busy with one thing or another!  No time to blog!  Well, now I’ll get back to the entry I began ages ago! 

I just love Garden Centres – especially if they have a cafe with good food!   I have to say that Paddock Farm, where Colin hangs out, was up there in the top ratings for food,  but locally, well fairly locally, there’s Dobbie’s!  Met Linda there the other day and after a nice salad lunch we went wandering!  She needed plant supports and I wanted wild bird food.  Her plant supports weren’t hard to find but in the meantime I made for the bird feeding section.  Loads of choice of this-mix-of-seeds and that-mix-of-seeds-with-suet, etc, and then I saw the bird tables!  My downstairs neighbour has asked me to move the feeding trays on the balcony that the birds have been using all winter, as she says she is having to wash her windows every day, so I thought I would put a bird table further inside the balcony, and to discourage the pigeons, and crows, put a netting round it so only the small birds could use it!  Well, there was one rather nice bird table on display – probably expensive, I thought – and so it was.  However it was slightly damaged – only in that the roof was missing a length of wood on a corner to cover the edges of adjoining slate tiles.  Well, the assistant offered it to me for below half price!  I couldn’t believe it!  So now it stands on my balcony, well back from the edge, and so far the blackbirds have discovered it!  The pigeons are frustrated at not being able to use it  and the crows are considering what to do next! ---- but back to Dobbie’s. 

I knew I had to restrain myself when it came to buying plants – I have to get my garden in order first!  Changes to be made, then plants to be bought – so I contented myself with taking photos.   The rhododendrons in pots were beautiful – I was so sure I would remember the name of this variety, but I haven’t,

 

 

 

but the next two are Percy Wiseman and Albert Schweitzer.

Then there were the hibiscus plants – in varying shades too - red,  pink,  yellow, ………..

 

 

 

These bottle-brush flowers reminded me of my trips to Australia.  I’d be surprised if they’d survive here in Scotland! 

There is so much to look at at Dobbie’s, not just pots and pots of plants but garden layouts and paths with wisteria dripping pergolas over them.   Isn’t this just glorious? 

 

 

Among my favourite shrubs is the potentilla which also comes in so many different varieties and colours,  pink, yellow, tangerine, lemon, white, and my favourite here – Red Robin!   Here’s another couple of  plants I liked.   I’ve forgotten the name of the yellow one

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but the pink one is a Mandeville!  Sounds like it’s going to eat you if you get too close!

I always seem to get garden ideas here.  I like the idea of growing my rhubarb in a wooden box cum basket ,with strawberries in a pot, and some herbs in wee pots, all grouped together.  Maybe I could group them on the steps up to my front door.

 

 

Petunias and dianthus look good in this old metal watering can too.  I bet they cost the earth these days, as everyone seems only to use plastic watering cans !

The kids loved the duck pond – and so did some of the adults, who chased around trying to get pictures of the ducklings.  Mother mallard had five youngsters but being in a safe environment she didn’t need to keep them close by her all the time … and they were all over the pond!  And can they move!!!  Some were almost out of shot by the time the shutter clicked!

 

 

 

 

 

From outside we wandered back into the main building for a quick look at the pets, Linda to look at the birds and me to find the wee critturs.  No moosies or hamsters to be seen, only a lovely loppy lugged bunny,  so I moved on, to find the bearded dragon lizards in glass fronted cages.  I think they are absolutely gorgeous.  These were probably youngsters, about 4 or 5 inches long, and they were very curious, coming up to the glass and pawing at it, as if it would let them through it!  Unfortunately none of the  close-up pics were very clear when I saw them on the computer screen, but this cute little guy stood and posed  He’s much the same colour as the sand, but the markings on his back are  so pretty.

Now believe it or not I left Dobbies with only my bargain bird table and some bird food.  Since it has been on the balcony for a while now, the house sparrows have found the hanging things and are as agile as any of their bluetit and great tit companions.  The crows, the pigeons and the rooks are still visitors to the balcony – but I rather think my neighbour won’t have to complain about messy windows as it’s the balcony rail they perch on, and the edge of the balcony that I will have to go and clean up later!

Talk again soon.