No change in the weather today……misty, wet and warm. I decided to walk up to Leighton Hall to look for the Red Deer.
Leighton Hall is open to the public but not at the moment…..there are no public to open for……No sign of Red Deer either so I plodded back to the van.
This is the Home Farm or what remains of it. Most country houses had a Home or Holme farm. It saved the milkman calling and saved money on butcher and greengrocer bills. Most have become redundant since Tescoburys came along.
After drying out to merely damp I played with my dongle…….the signal was worse than yesterday…non-existent in fact.
After the last of my pies and a tomato I set off on the three hundred yard walk to Leighton Moss. The place was heaving with people but not with birds. I can only access a bit of it as it isn’t dog friendly. The visitors on the causeway which does allow dogs were not dog friendly either. One chap, with a larger than average spotting scope, said , ‘Can’t you read?…It’s no dogs!’ I bit my tongue and went, ‘UrrArrgh!’ Whilst doing my best impersonation of Quasimodo. That seemed to sort him out. On we went to the RSPB Visitor centre. Tied the dogs to the bike rack and entered the shop.
By gum they have some stuff……Telescopes and binoculars in exchange for vast sums of money £2K for a pair of binoculars. Bloody Hell! Mind you the birds are a long way away. I was beginning to wish I was.
I bit the bullet and purchased a very nice Nyjer feeder from a lovely and genteel lady. She enquired whether I required the seed for it. I said no. Nyjer seed is expensive. I’ll see how it goes before I fill it up. I ended up with a couple of kilos of seed and some lens cleaner, the latter to keep it polished up so the birds can see the seeds. The prices were very reasonable, a pleasant surprise. My mate arrived this morning and accompanied us to the reserve and shop. He bought a clock that sings bird songs every hour. He must have got it working for at three o’clock I heard him exclaim………………What the F..k! Shut up Purdey!..Purdey is his dog. I opened the camper door and shouted across the fifty yards of misty field….Clock working all right?
Ivy Berries. Plenty of these around along with Coots, Grey Lag geese and Tufted Duck. I’m going out early tomorrow. The place doesn’t open till half nine so I should be able to have it to myself for an hour or so. Hopefully not totally to myself…..I’d like a few birds as well.
I woke to winds rocking the van so tried messing with the dongle again. It is now suspended from the spare bed in the roof and seems fine.
I’ll catch up later if it’s still working.
From the looks of that first picture the weather is not great there. I enjoyed your previous post but had trouble leaving a comment (new computer this end), was happy to see the map so that I could properly locate you. Hope you see lots of deer but no rude tourists.
ReplyDeleteHope your dongle start behaving better; nothing worse than a dodgy dongle.
ReplyDeleteSome birders are a strange lot Adrian. The Quasimodo trick sounds a good one. Hope you manage to see a few birds today.
It's the weather, that's the limit. It's funny you know, it even keeps the birds away, or I think so.
ReplyDeleteHope the weather improved for you today Adrian (Although it doesn't look promising)!
ReplyDeleteHome Farm looks to have some photogenic possibilities?
Now, be careful where you wave your dongle around, it could cause you no end of problems!!...[;o)
The folks in your area don't seem to have a great sense of humour...unless it was a "dry sense of humour in a wet country" (oops, a bit cheesy!).
ReplyDeleteWe have 1 of these clocks from the RSPB and they are brilliant I think, so brilliant that i gave one to my Mum in France and she adores it! The fun with those is that your visitors are always looking for the cage where you imprisoned the noon Tawny Owl or the 4pm Woodpecker! :))
I saw one of these clocks with dogs barking...and that is not right at all, you just want to throw it through the window...so disruptive and unpleasant! The pity is when there's a good idea, then you have a legion of people who try to copy it and it never works!
Anyway, hope the weather will improve. We've been lucky here since the beginning of the week with the most amazing sunsets, now it drizzles! :(
I'm not sure you should be spending so much timne playing with your dongle. Won't you go blind?
ReplyDeleteAfter a wet and windy night it's sunny here this morning so I hope it's spread the 77.6 miles North to you. (Yes, I'm so sad I had to look up if my estimate of eighty miles was about right!)
The problem with nyjer seed feeders is that.... you can only put nyjer seed in them. We had a feeder break in the wind the other day and the only spare one in the garage was for nyger seed, which we didn't have any off. Unfortunately the little bar that stops the small nyjer seed falling out stops birds getting at anything bigger. They had to make do with a fat filled half-coconut instead!
ReplyDeleteGillian, the weather is grim. It's birders a few percent of them are a little anally retentive.
ReplyDeleteKeith, cheers.
Bob, the birds go home in bad weather.
Trevor, Home farm is difficult to access....it looks as if it's being converted into holiday lets.
Bloody dongle!
DeeBee, he forgotten to programme his so his Tawny Owls and Blue Tits were all over the place.
John, NO I'll go mad. There is nothing worse than half an internet connection. It's sunny now.
Mark, I just like Siskin so am hoping it will be worth the money.
We don't get Siskin on Lewis so I've never invested in niger seed. As for here in NZ there's so many birds and so much food they'd laugh at me if I gave them bought stuff.
ReplyDeleteThere are none at Leighton Moss that I saw either.
ReplyDelete