Beauty and the Beast

Just thirty miles away, from the atrocities of the Manchester bombing.  A  limestone dale,  full of beautiful flowers, birds and tranquillity. Bathed in sunshine.

The path through the daisies, led us on, deeper into  thought, and deeper into the dale.

But we can’t comprehend.  Stand together Manchester

Buzzards and Bramblings

How lucky am I to be able to sit and watch birds great and small from my window. I think these are bramblings, a bird I can’t recall visiting us before, there are greenfinches and goldfinches too.

We’ve moved the feeder, closer to a hawthorn, and it seems that with feeding wild birds, as in retail, the three most important things are position, position and position, there have been upwards of 40 birds visiting  at any one time, the hawthorn shimmers with them. But hard to try and capture in an image, especially when it is snowing, as illustrated here..

This afternoon a buzzard was soaring over the field against a blue sky, always a treat, it used to be rare to see to them here: and last week we had several sightings of a raven, much bigger than a rook and being mobbed by them, it was his distinctive call and a check with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust members on social media that confirmed our suspicions.

Saturday’s weather lifted everyone’s spirits  after a week of snow ice and rain: even if the  mood of the day was tempered by the news that after eight days without a telephone connection,  thank you Doris, we now face at least a week, probably more, before can expect to be reconnected, as the repair involves new cabling,  requiring traffic management, cherry pickers and cable drums.

Sharp

A sharp frost and a foggy morning, and more than a little black ice.  I must be getting to be a grown up, because I chose to travel the road more travelled, not less, where I could be more confident of some salt on the road. I managed to find some pretty things though.

These burrs look much more attractive on the plant, than they would entangled in Spud the dogs fur.

The seed heads of the cow parsley looks poised for the insertion of ice diamonds

Mother’s little helper

Despite the cats best efforts I managed to complete my RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this morning.

The roll call included, blackbird, wood pigeon, tree creeper, nuthatch, greenfinch, chaffinch, long tailed tits (my favourite), wren (feisty), robin, dunock, jackdaw, song thrush (so beautiful) and  goldfinch galore. Not bad for one hour.

Lock Down

Our chickens continue their enforced confinement , due to the risk of them contracting Avian Flu from migrating birds, they have to stay in their run.

They’ve adapted pretty well to this change of circumstances, I’ve tried to give them things to entertain, as well as replace the amount of fresh grass  and vegetation they normally graze.  And  I’ll confess, that without thinking about it, that for a few days, I was taking them an armful of windfall apples each day, which they loved (we’ve had a prolific year for apples).

That was, until it occurred to me, that the migrating birds I was trying to keep away from the chickens had probably been grazing on these apples. So much for bio security!

I hasten to add that these apples are very much more munched  than back at the start of the lock down in mid December , when they were whole apples with unbroken skin

January, the longest month.

Or so it seems.

just as well February is just around the corner.

It’s unlikely to be any warmer but it will be lighter; for that I am thankful.  For the last few days its seemed as if the sky has discharged its greyness into the landscape. It’s difficult to decide where one stops and the other begins.

Tight Fit

A second belated post from our weekend, back in November in the Yorkshire Dales . We went to

There was still snow about.  Yorkshire drystone walls have different coping stones than Derbyshire walls

You don’t often see paved foot paths around here either, we were glad of them though, it was very wet and muddy.

The stile however posed a bit of a problem for Spud, they are obviously built for Yorkshire terriers, or maybe Whippets, but not Springer spaniels

Poor Spud, he needed a lift.

the local  working dogs have got it sussed though. Gates open for them.