Posts by Little Wing

I'm very fond of them. They have been coming into the garden to gather nesting material lately. They will later bring the chicks along for a feed. The sound the chick makes when hungry is dreadful. I once dashed outside thinking something was dying or choking and found a baby hadeda shouting at its parents for grub.

They get annoyed with me if I happen to go out with the dog and don't see them foraging. The dog always gives them a good chase and they drift up onto the roof and sit there shouting at us in Hadeda language. Big round brown eyes peering down accusingly. They are a scream, really. And they eat snails and King Crickets so they are also welcome visitors.

Unless Andrew raped her, there simply is no crime.

When, and not if, a new source of fuel arises, all this crap will vanish like morning mist. The world will still be overpopulated and all the problems of consumer waste and habitat threats will still be there but oil will no longer be the scapegoat.

Quote from Horizon

It's utterly bizarre that schoolchildren were doing protesting yesterday during the school day. I assume the kids are already highly educated and can afford to miss school time for these protests...

Their role model has dropped out of school so she can sail round the world on carbon fibre yachts telling adults what idiots they are.

And no doubt a nice hours long stint playing computer games using ecologically unfriendly batteries.

They need to see a crop after it's been decimated by locusts as well, or blight, in order to understand that things don't just grow beautifully on their own and big plump fruits and veg don't just plop off the plants without serious competition from Mother Nature's creatures who all want some of that. They need to see what happens when farmers don't institute measures to get their veggie fodder to them in good shape.

They need to think about hospital intensive care wards where 24/7 equipment has to keep going by means of electricity to save lives.

They need to stop building daft ugly houses out of wood that use so much timber an oak forest has to die so they can live in an "eco dwelling".

The Climateers seem to have eclipsed news on the Brexiteers. Today was all about angry children shaking their fists at the adult world and anyone with electricity.

Apparently wrens are very significant bug controllers. And feisty and defensive.

Absolutely. My question every time someone claims they have an overseas conference or meeting. I have come to the conclusion that these trips are a perk they enjoy too much to do this by video. They should be forced to do it by video.

I see they are mostly nesters in cavities, but I somehow always thought they liked creepers. See Ivy League down the page here:

https://www.discoverwildlife.c…garden-for-nesting-birds/

She isn't a very young girl. She is a young woman over the age of consent, buggering about in the mansion of a wealthy, sleazy older man. A very young girl would be twelve or under. A girl would be above twelve and under sixteen. They are becoming unrealistic (and hysterical) about this whole thing and are even calling 18 year old boys who go out with 14 year old girls "paedophiles". It's nuts.

Now there are the Paisley People. Arms covered in drawings and odd things climbing out of their collars and up their necks.

I think having a small tattoo defining who or what you are is fine. Back of one shoulder or upper arm. A sort of signature. Army, navy, airforce, gardener, doctor, sculptor, etc. A tasteful and meaningful little icon. Not a tapestry of former lovers, religious mythology and riotous abandon as though the human body was the canvas of an artist on LSD.

Find out if they would like to go overseas by carbon fibre yacht. And come home the same way. Every time they had to travel.

If all he did was sleep with the accuser and if this was consensual, she doesn't have a leg to stand on, legally.

I don't have any tats. No Botox or implants or any surgeries. I also don't dye my hair now that it is going silverish.

I agree about nose jewellery and tongue studs, etc

Yes, wrens are the loveliest little feathered folk imaginable.

But they need creepers a to live in, do they not? And people have this thing for ripping down creepers today.

I am having a problem with her looking happy and smiling in the Prince's company. She would appear to have been a willing participant as there doesn't seem to be any reason why she would be there doing that unless she wanted to. Saying she was trafficked from America is hard to accept. From South America, maybe, from Central America, certainly, but as it stands she is looking a little iffy in trying to make Andrew look like "an abuser". She is not a child.

Two hadeda ibis landed in the front garden this morning. Watched them absolutely gobbling bugs in the ground cover

No. Too expensive. Have to make do with a fan when things get ridiculous.

I'm sorry, but I'm so sick of these a-holes now that every time I see them I switch channels and every time I see a news report of them I go somewhere else. They have become a joke. Many of them are only about six years old. The whole thing is perilously close to becoming a circus and the real environmental issues are not being addressed.

It isn't just all about fossil fuels. We cannot realistically continue the global civilization that relies on electricity produced by fossil fuel plants and nuclear energy to suddenly start working off a few ugly windmills and a couple of equally unsightly solar panels. That is fine for domestic use and small scale off the grid operations who want to save money by getting free hot water and relying on the wind whenever it feels like blowing. Or who can no longer rely on their national grid (like me).

The real problems are far more complex and I notice the young brigade being used to head the protests are banging on about "money". The fossil fuel powered civilizations are not about money, actually, they are about producing electricity. The protestors are putting over an idea that getting rich is what it's all about. That is bollocks. Making electricity is what it's all about. Only a handful of companies make profits out of providing electricity for billions of people who would be in dire straits without it. One cannot just change from a fossil fuel based economy and civilization to one of agrarian veggie munching and nature worshipping primitiveness.

The whole thing is insane. It's making people look stupid and pompous and arrogant, as well as crafting a particularly unnecessary moral supremacy that is teaching children they know more when they know next to nothing and making adults worship the opinions of five year olds.

Hopefully, after watershed year 2020 there will be a return to more sane undertakings to deal with climate change, overpopulation and consumerism that have produced too much plastic pollution from the packaging industry and perilously threatened habitats through overpopualtion.

Yesterday was hell.

John Major

Interesting.

These are fantastic! But will the cat kill the pricklies?

Know how you feel. Today 29C with "real feel" of 33C

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking ...

Heero's right. Snakes don't hunt or attack anything that isn't on the menu. It's only when they are disturbed suddenly and frightened that they bite. In urban areas you almost never see them, but if you do, it's best to call the snake people. Snakes come in after rats and because their natural habitat is shrinking. Once they were regarded as symbols of wisdom and some were deity symbols. Unfortunately with the conversion to foreign religions, snakes became associated with Satan and evil.

Quote from bryanluc

A bird of prey has started to make appearances around our garden, and we have found one pile of feathers

Every time it appears by the time we've got the camera it's off so taking a pic has been difficult to date

Wow, is it a harrier?

I don't interfere with wild indigenous creatures feeding off whatever it is they survive on. I have a problem with invasive species that prey on wild species or that replace them in their natural habitats. The grey squirrel and the domestic cat are two of these. There is an increasing number of land air and water species that are causing havoc world wide by being introduced. And, yes, humans do the same sort of thing.

Yes, I have the pain killers and I managed to manouevre myself into a bath yesterday. But as I have pulled the muscle it is stiffening up and this will take 4-6 weeks to heal. I am hoping in a few more days it might allow me to move. At the moment, I need the stick for everything and I can't cough, sneeze or bend. I have to slowly descend to one knee and then the other to do anything at lower level, then haul myself up with the aid of the stick. And every time one moves there is that sharp pain that shoots in.

Horizon, re the green mamba: they are still around but this happened to my grandmother in the tropical region, not where I live. In those days you couldn't call the snake people to come and remove it, so you just had to do it yourself or your family were at huge risk. In those days things were wilder and not so urbanised. I once saw a green mamba stuck in the aviary wire of my uncle's finch aviary as it tried to get to the birds. Just outside the window. Beautiful snake. He had to kill it as there were no snake people in those days either. He whacked it with a stick.

Where I am there is the rinkhals, a deadly job. My brother has had a cobra in the garden and there are puff adders. But now you can call the snake people who catch these creatures and release them in the wild.