Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2020 10:50:05 GMT
Again thanks for the birthday wishes. The day turned into probably the best birthday I've ever had, in spite or even because of the current situation.
I awoke to find that my older sister in Toronto had sent overnight 30 odd pictures from the 1960's 70's and 80's many of which I had not seen for 40 odd years.
I then had literally hundreds of birthday wishes and comments on social media and had to give up replying by midday when after our morning walk relatives and friends started Facetiming or contacting by Zoom. Unfortunately the "Live Feed" to the boxes had to be sacrificed to allow the appropriate Bandwidth for this.
Our neighbours delivered a bottle of my favourite wine to the front door with card and balloons, rang the bell and then ran down the front steps to the street and then sang happy birthday with banners and poppers! Me and Mrs Benn then had much wine and a lovely late afternoon BBQ with music in the hot spring sunshine.
At 7pm I was surprised by my wife who had managed to get 24 friends and relatives from all over the country, Canada and Indonesia together for a Zoom party that was hilarious!
Back on topic
......Further tales from the Moors. Here are a few pics from our walk yesterday and a video clip of Chaffinch song. The area has 3 types of Flora. Open Moorland, Mature spruce/fir woodland where the majority of my old boxes are mounted and 20 year old plantation woods that are more open with a mixture of fir and mostly deciduous trees (video clip). This latter area is full of singing Chaffinches. It is no exaggeration that there is a singing Male every 100 yards and this results in a cacophony of sound. There are also dozens of butterflies confirming that this might be a bumper year for these after a good summer last year and a mild winter.
The older fir woodland contains wood pigeons, many singing Robins, Great tits, some blue tits and a fewof the more shy Coal tits. So far two boxes have moss from Great Tits and we found another with a Blue tit exiting which had the first sprigs of moss. The Moorland has less birdlife but I am pleased to say that there are now 4 or 5 singing Skylarks after a few lean years and quite a few flocks of Meadow Pipits. But my favourite here is the soulful eerie call of mating Curlews that seems to travel over a mile!
Enough ramblings and I can now reinstate my live feed, where there is not much to report in terms of progress whilst waiting for the first Blue Tit egg and the Robin continuing to sit on 5 eggs. The male Robin is around a lot more feeding his Mrs with insects and sunflower hearts and giving the Dunnocks a hard time after they had the temerity to enter the Ivy near the nestsite!
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I awoke to find that my older sister in Toronto had sent overnight 30 odd pictures from the 1960's 70's and 80's many of which I had not seen for 40 odd years.
I then had literally hundreds of birthday wishes and comments on social media and had to give up replying by midday when after our morning walk relatives and friends started Facetiming or contacting by Zoom. Unfortunately the "Live Feed" to the boxes had to be sacrificed to allow the appropriate Bandwidth for this.
Our neighbours delivered a bottle of my favourite wine to the front door with card and balloons, rang the bell and then ran down the front steps to the street and then sang happy birthday with banners and poppers! Me and Mrs Benn then had much wine and a lovely late afternoon BBQ with music in the hot spring sunshine.
At 7pm I was surprised by my wife who had managed to get 24 friends and relatives from all over the country, Canada and Indonesia together for a Zoom party that was hilarious!
Back on topic
......Further tales from the Moors. Here are a few pics from our walk yesterday and a video clip of Chaffinch song. The area has 3 types of Flora. Open Moorland, Mature spruce/fir woodland where the majority of my old boxes are mounted and 20 year old plantation woods that are more open with a mixture of fir and mostly deciduous trees (video clip). This latter area is full of singing Chaffinches. It is no exaggeration that there is a singing Male every 100 yards and this results in a cacophony of sound. There are also dozens of butterflies confirming that this might be a bumper year for these after a good summer last year and a mild winter.The older fir woodland contains wood pigeons, many singing Robins, Great tits, some blue tits and a fewof the more shy Coal tits. So far two boxes have moss from Great Tits and we found another with a Blue tit exiting which had the first sprigs of moss. The Moorland has less birdlife but I am pleased to say that there are now 4 or 5 singing Skylarks after a few lean years and quite a few flocks of Meadow Pipits. But my favourite here is the soulful eerie call of mating Curlews that seems to travel over a mile!
Enough ramblings and I can now reinstate my live feed, where there is not much to report in terms of progress whilst waiting for the first Blue Tit egg and the Robin continuing to sit on 5 eggs. The male Robin is around a lot more feeding his Mrs with insects and sunflower hearts and giving the Dunnocks a hard time after they had the temerity to enter the Ivy near the nestsite!