Saturday 10 February 2007

Still about the weather..

This morning, the weather was beautiful, like last Saturday again, but with snow on the ground! I decided to make my once a year attack on the corregated plastic sheeting on my aviary roof. I normally leave this till there is snow on it, because as it is swept off, it takes a lot of the green stuff off with it. Lots of dead leaves too. Hopefully, it will be the last time I have to do it now that the trees are gone and it should get sun on it now, and not go green. It makes it so much lighter for the birds. I suppose it will now be too hot for them in the summer, and I will be having to put something over it to shade it! How crazy is this weather though, sweeping and shovelling snow in a t-shirt! It was boiling with the sun on my back, and sweat was running down my face and stinging my eyes!

As soon as I'd finished that, I thought I'd take Emma to the park for a huff round, and I needed to pick up my sack of sunflower hearts that I'd ordered. I was starting to panic as I only had a handful left, if the snow had stuck around on the roads, I would have run out. I managed to get out of my bit of road although it was still covered in snow (as was the car) and then all the other roads were clear. I couldn't believe it though, I got to Llandysul, and there was no snow! None on the pavements, none at the park, so Emma didn't get a huff round on the snow, just the grass as normal. Oh, and typical of my luck - it clouded up and started to rain! After all that beautiful weather, it waited for me to start walking. Saw lots of Long Tailed tits again, they like the park. Good job, because I doubt I shall ever see them in my garden again now the trees are gone. Oh and as I pulled away from the car park, I was witness to three buzzards having an airborne bundle right next to me! Absolutely amazing. Literally 10 feet away to my right and about 8 feet off the river! Guess they were fighting over a female!

I took the photos below on my way back - see, we still had plenty of snow, hard to believe that 4 miles away there was virtually none. How weird. You can just see our village nestling in between the dip in the valley. As I took these, there was a Red Kite circling overhead, so been a nice day for birds. Apart from Nobby Nuthatch. No sign of him at all. Sadly have to draw the conclusion that he didn't make it. I'm sure he would have been here if he was okay. Such a shame, but I guess even if I'd caught him yesterday, he would still have died. The trouble with birds is by the time you see they are ill, it's normally too late to help them anyway. There's a sick male chaffinch hanging around the bird table today now. It's ripping through that flock, that will make around 5 or 6 in the last couple of weeks. :(


2 comments:

nicola said...

it could be that he felt better and went off...

Boo said...

That's what I hope too!

Lovely pics Jan, nice to see your village, even if it was in the distance. :)