First there has been the sad task of disposing of the last remaining house martin chick's body. When we came home yesterday, we found the remains of the entire nest, including a tiny live chick, lying in the drive - it had fallen off the wall.
Following RSPB instructions, we fashioned a substitute nest from a plastic box, and fastened it by the bathroom window, which was as near as we could get it to the original site above the window. The idea was that the chick's cries would attract the parents to the box, and they would continue to feed the chick.
The parent birds returned many times to the place the nest had been, but completely ignored the nearby box containing their chick - it was probably too weak to call by then anyway.
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On a more cheerful note, the raspberries are getting ripe enough to pick - if I can beat the sparrows and blackbirds to them!
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There has been some publicity lately about a woman who had a stroke, and now allegedly sounds more like a Jamaican than the Geordie she really is (she sounds just like a Geordie to me). This has been described as "Foreign Accent Syndrome", which is surely an invention of an imaginative journalist.
But those of you who know me will appreciate that this Syndrome has haunted me for the past 25 years, ever since I moved to the North-East.
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And a couple of pictures - from a visit this week to Wallington House in Northumberland . Resisting the gardens, which are one of the great attractions there, I turned my camera on the famous gargoyle heads on the front lawn.
Here they are all in a row, and below is a close up. Wonder what they look like by moonlight?
P.S. "I told you so in May" - well July actually: my notice of retirement has gone to my line manager.
5 comments:
Wow, those gargoyle heads are amazing. And the thought of them in the moonlight ...!!! I think if I went for a midnight pic nic by them, I might like to take them an offering of a sandwich to keep them friendly ;-)
ruby - they might just need more than a sandwich.....
jack - haven't gone yet; it's a quote froma Tom Lehrer song called "When you are old and grey", that goes "when I leave in December, I told you so in May"
I gotta say they look like irritable sheep to me. Do sheep eat sandwiches?
Probably prefer cucumber to ham, though.
mm, quotes from Tom Lehrer......
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