Friday at the Flicks - Common Gull, Bathing Blackbird

I often see gulls flying around the village but rarely see one land. This Common Gull rested for a while on top of the telegraph pole just past the end of my garden. Gulls often seem to stand on one leg but I had a feeling by the way this one was standing it may have injured its left leg.



If I lean over the kitchen work surface I can just see the pond waterfall. The other day a Blackbird was having a good old wash and brush up.



Still on the subject of Blackbirds - they spend a lot of their time looking under every stone and searching every crevice to find food. It ends up with moss and gravel being thrown all over the garden.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Bird Visitors to My Garden

That was the title I gave to my very first post two years ago. How time flies. It feels like only a few months since I took the plunge and wondered if I would find enough to waffle on about to keep the blog going.

A few days ago I got to wondering just how many different species of birds visit my garden so I sat down and made a list of those which had visited so far this month. I was more than a bit surprised when the total reached twenty different species. Here they are though few of the photographs were taken this month as the lighting conditions have been so dull. Nothing out of the ordinary. Mostly very common garden birds here.



You can click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photos, the arrows near the thumbnails will move back and forth through the list. Click on 'close' to get back to the thumbnails. Alternatively click on the first (top left) thumbnail and use the arrows next to the large picture to go through them all. Hovering over a large photo reveals its name.

My thanks to all who have visited Midmarsh Jottings over the past two years and I hope to see many of you again in the coming year. It is very flattering and encouraging to see over 23000 visits from 114 different countries.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

A full house for the end of last year but unfortunately a resounding zero for the start of 2011. The clue: Felix was referring to the cartoon character Felix the cat. Kin is another word for relative - hence it was a close view of a catkin. This one was from my corkscrew hazel bush.



Now for something a little different - not a what is it but a who done it.
A few years ago I laid some concrete outside my greenhouse but I got the mixture a bit too sandy. Last winter the ice started to crack it but something else decided to join in the demolition job. Can you guess what?



No prizes - just for fun.

Friday at the Flicks - Great Tit, Stock Dove

The Great Tit continues to use the nest box every night, Yesterday morning I managed to get a bit of video from outside the box as it left.



It was quite a surprise yesterday to see a very nervous Stock Dove in the garden. It spent a lot of its time being chased around by the Wood Pigeons but did manage to find a few peaceful moments to eat some of the scattered seed.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

A Few Flowers to Brighten up a Dreary Winter Day

The only thing I didn't like about the 3D flash I made yesterday is that the music starts immediately on loading - something I personally dislike when I visit other web sites so I replaced it with a new one without sound.

I liked the program so much I took advantage of the offer to add, for a small remuneration, their classic flash gallery maker. This is made using one of the variety of styles from that set:

A few cheerful flowers taken over the past few years.



You can click on the thumbnails or hover over the large picture and use the arrows to change the choice of photo. The arrows under the thumbnails only work if there are lots more photos in the flash.

3D Flash Albums - Today's Give Away of the Day

As some of you may remember I keep an eye on the  GiveAway of the Day website for any interesting goodies. Today they have Aneesoft 3D Flash Gallery 2.4 available to download and keep the fully working version for free. This will be available until approximately 8am GMT tomorrow. I assume it is only for PC users.

The program is very simple to use to build you own 3D flash galleries. It needs Adobe Flash Player 10 to be installed on your computer. You can access GOTD site by looking down the right hand side of this blog. Once on their site click on the large yellow button - proceed to download page - and choose the download. It is a zipped file. Read the instructions in the text file contained in the zipped file.

This is just a very quick test flash I made. (They can't touch you for it)
Use the mouse cursor to choose a photo, click on it to enlarge, click on it again to get back to the choices.
There is a sound mute button near the bottom right.



There are 21 different styles of display and music can be added. For use on a blog the main problem might be finding somewhere to store it. I had to use my Pro Photobucket account as it doesn't allow .swf files on a free account. The program can also make executable files and screensavers of your flash galleries.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

What an excellent end to the 2010 season of puzzle pictures. Four people made a guess and all were correct. Gold stars to Glo, Adrian, Keith and Wilma who all worked out that it was a stopwatch.

  


Now on to the first puzzle picture for 2011. This is about 40x magnification taken through the microscope built up with 12 shots processed using CombineZP.



Clue: Not really one of Felix's relatives.

Have fun puzzling it out. No prizes, just your name in lights if correctly identified.


Blackbirds: During the few days the temperature was above zero the number of visiting early morning Blackbirds had fallen but this morning there were more than ever. I counted 33 (yes thirty-three) and there could have been a few more in the shadows as it was only just getting light at the time. Makes me wonder just how many there are in the village. My garden seems to have become the village birdy seed kitchen. Also visiting were about six Rooks and a similar number of Jackdaws.