Red Sky at Night ....

... hopefully means good weather tomorrow.

A few shots of the Sunset this evening:







No tinkering - all exactly as taken by my trusty old Nikon Coolpix S9050

Christmas

A quick Christmas greeting:



Not a lot going on here at the moment. Mainly dodging rain showers and listening to audio books. Hard to believe this is normally a fairly dry part of the country. Anyway a new coal / flame effect gas fire is keeping this room cosy and a fibre optic canvas picture, used in the video, hanging on the chimney breast cheers up the room.

One For Ron

Many years ago when cigarette smoking was a common activity I held out my pack to a friend so he could take one. He took two. One he lit and the other he put behind his ear.
"One for Ron." he says.
"Ron?" I queried.
"Yes," says he. "For later on.".

I was reminded of that as I watched a Grey Squirrel helping itself to some peanuts I had place in a dish on top of the Hedgehog House.



Very much an example of 'One for Ron" as it ate some and buried many in the grass to, hopefully, find again 'later on'. (No sound from this camera)

Pond Lily

Just a brief post today. I noticed a flower on a lily in my raised pond. Took a photo and then ...



... decided to 'colour pop' the photo to make it stand out against a greyed out background.

Suns All Round

For once, here anyway, we have had Sunshine on and off all day and the temperature actually reached the dizzying height of 20C. Probably nearly warm enough for the BBC to show in a scary red on their new, let's scare the masses, temperature colour scheme. Another Sun which appeared was in the shape of ...





... this Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus) also known as a Sun Fly. There were other flying creatures around but the most abundant, and irritating, were scores of what my mother used to call thunder flies (thrips). They may be only 2mm long and 1mm thick but when they land and crawl about on the skin in their dozens it feels very itchy to say the least. Fortunately they are harmless to humans, just very irritating.

Thieving Magpie

I happened to spot this video capture this morning. I was curious as to what it was doing.



In the past I have seen them bury the occasional peanut in the lawn. This is first time I have been able to work out how and why some food suddenly goes missing from the bird table.

Fox Visitor

Wow - best part of a month since I last wrote anything. Not that there has been much of real interest to inspire me until now. I was idly checking through last night's video captures when I spotted this fleeting visit:



Not sure whether its coat shows signs of mange or whether it is wet for some reason. On checking my other cameras I see it explored most of the garden. The Hedgehog had been in the Hedgehog House but had left about five minutes before the Fox arrived.