Thursday 1st January, 2015
Three cheers! We have survived another Christmas and New Year/ Yuletide/ Winterval/ Happy Holidays/ Greedfest. It is all over for another year . . . or maybe just another eight months because Christmas merchandise seems to appear in the shops earlier every year. I know that traditionally " 'tis the season to be jolly" but how about sparing a thought for the more introverted people? There must be other people apart from me who are not bubbly, all singing and dancing, jolly, merry, life and soul of the party types. Couldn't we have a season to be quietly content and happy? And, by the way, was I the only little girl who couldn't understand why grown-ups said "Three chairs!" when they were happy?
Now it is over I will be able to escape from the kitchen and return to the garden as soon as the weather permits. The forecast for the first day of the year doesn't look too promising . . . Overcast today with spells of rain or drizzle, occasionally heavy. It will be very windy too, the strong to gale force south or south-westerly winds possibly reaching severe gale at times in exposed locations with gusts to 60 mph; highest temperature a mild 13 Celsius but tempered by the wind and rain.
I don't mind having an indoor day to sort out my thoughts and contemplate resolutions about eating less and exercising more - but I had hoped for a spectacular sunrise to illustrate the New Year dawning. No such luck, there wasn't a pink cloud in sight . . . just a grey, rainy morning. It was too wet to take the camera outside so I opened the living room window and took a quick snap from inside. The camera did its best to brighten the scene but it lied. The sky was even more gloomy than this photo suggests.
I have been taking a few sky photos recently because the garden isn't very photogenic in December. This was yesterday's sunrise - not the first of the New Year but at least the last of the Old Year.
And the sun was so low in the sky that this cloud on Christmas Eve really did have a silver lining.
December wasn't exactly dry - but it was far less wet than October and November. We had 78mm of rain compared with close to 300mm in each of the two preceding months.
We have been on one walk recently - a trip out to the Ayres on Tuesday. It was a lovely sunny day and unusually calm for the Point of Ayre which is a notoriously windy place and popular for kite flying. We only saw one family with a kite and they were having difficulty keeping their kite aloft in the gentle breeze.
I took the obligatory photo of the lighthouse . . .
. . . and then we walked along the shore towards the nature reserve, hoping for birds. We were surprised to see the shingle littered with what looked at first glance like tumbleweed.
I had a closer look and saw that the dead plants had been growing in the shingle and were still anchored by their roots.
It is hard to identify a plant in this condition but if I had to guess I would place a small bet on the "tumbleweed" being biennial sea radish which died after flowering last summer. I haven't noticed much growing on this stretch of shingle before but I photographed the pods on some sea radish at the Cronk at the end of July and I have read that "The seeds are dispersed by sea-water, in which they can float for 7 - 10 days without loss of viability." So it is quite possible for them to colonise a new area. But the only way to be sure would be to return next summer to see whether any more seeds have germinated.
A little further on we came across a pair of choughs foraging at the edge of the shingle. When we got too close they flew off towards the lighthouse "choughing" quietly as they flew past us.
We saw very few other birds at the Point of Ayre, just a couple of gulls, a hooded crow, a cormorant flying low over the sea and a little brown bird that disappeared so quickly that there was no time to identify it. But there has been bird activity in the garden. We had the first real frost of the winter on Monday and there have been even more customers at the bird feeder than usual.
There was added excitement under the bird feeder because I bought a big piece of mild cheddar - a Christmas present for our resident robin. Tim cut some into small pieces and put the saucer of cheese on top of the pheasant trap. I opened the dining room window to photograph the robin enjoying his treat and waited, and waited and waited. Getting colder and colder. No robin in sight. A couple of coal tits fluttered down to get a closer view of the cheese before deciding that it was dangerous and beating a hasty retreat. There is a limit to how much I am prepared to suffer to get a "perfect" picture. So I closed the window and retreated to the warm kitchen to take photos through the glass of the firmly closed kitchen window. Eventually a brave coal tit sampled the cheese and then the word spread. The coal tits were very fast and I kept pressing the shutter just too late. I ended up with numerous blurred birds or just a plate of cheese and no bird in the frame. Eventually one coal tit waited long enough for me to get a photo.
The birds knocked the plate off the trap before I got a good robin picture but Tim put out another saucer of cheese at ground level and the robin returned.
There was some drama when a second robin arrived and I nearly managed to get a photo of a robin fight! The camera couldn't cope with fast movement in the dull light and I ended up with this blurred image of an enraged robin defending its Christmas present!
While I was busy photographing blurred birds and plates of cheese, I nearly missed seeing the return of the long tailed tits up on the peanut feeders in the tree. It wasn't easy to get a good photo because they were partly obscured by the lower branches. I thought of cutting back the offending twigs but decided against it because I think the branches help protect the little birds from the sparrowhawks who like a clear path to swoop along when they are hunting. This was the best picture but sadly they all had their backs towards the camera.
Today we saw the long tailed tits on two occasions. The first time I wasn't happy with the photos because the feeders were swaying so fast in the wind that it was impossible to focus. But the little party of tits came back later and I got one reasonable shot.
It may be the bleak midwinter but life is stirring in the garden. During a brief break in the rain, I went out to get a photo of our first snowdrop buds. They were almost as active as the coal tits - dancing in the gusts of wind.
No comments:
Post a Comment