Friday at the Flicks - Apples, Pheasant

No sign of any Winter visiting thrushes here as yet but the local Starlings and Blackbirds are tucking in to the apples I put out. The apples are fixed on a bolt so they stay in place:



The cock Pheasant seems to have become a regular morning visitor. As I thought, Penny doesn't exactly welcome large birds to her garden but, ungainly as it is, the Pheasant can take off faster than Penny can reach it. Here it is cleaning up the seed scattered from the feeders by the Starlings:




Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Who Will be the First?

An extra feeder put up yesterday. A new item from CJ Wildlife, my regular bird food supplier. This is a well built hefty metal bracket which holds a jar of peanut butter. These jars are filled with peanut butter which doesn't contain the salt the human variety has. There is a bolt at the top which is gently screwed down on the neck of the jar and stops it from falling out.



I wonder who will be the first to find,  investigate and try it out.
Although there is a bit of a 'perch' under the jar I think it needs a bit of tinkering as the metal coating is very smooth and slippery. Maybe a felt or rubber pad to give a bit of traction.

King of the Castle

When I see a bird sitting on the highest place it can find to observe the world it always reminds me of the days when as youngsters we played King of the Castle where we would battle to hold on to the highest place around.

European Starling (Stumus vulgaris)





At the moment there are not so many as in previous years and they are visiting less frequently. They are so quarrelsome, greedy and wasteful in the way they scatter food all over the place the smaller birds are able to get their fair share of the seed I put out.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Three correct guesses for last week's Guess What. Congratulations and virtual gold stars go to Bonnie, John and Jan for thinking it was part of an apple. It was what was left after several Starlings had had their fill.

  

I sliced off the top of the apple to make it easier for the birds to get started. The Starlings rapidly ate the soft inner and eventually the circle of skin that was left dropped off leaving the core.

A man made object for the new mystery object...

Guess What:

iPhone4 with add on macro lens

Clue: It's not getting any use in this weather.
No prizes. Just for fun.

Weird Visitor Statistics

Occasionally I check the HiStats statistics. Today it was showing an unheard of, for me anyway, 597 visitors of which 555 are new. Something strange here. Normally I would only see a handful.

 

The majority of this large number are shown to have come through goo which appears to be a Google system for shortening URLs and more than a few through gemscool which seems to be connected with an Indonesian games site. All these visits accessed only one page.



Looking at the geolocations shown most appear to have come from Mountain View in the US (nearly 500).



I'm not sure whether HiStats is playing silly beggars or what.
A DoS attack on Blogger?

Later:
Jan put me on the right track. Google is located in Mountain View and searching elsewhere showed that Midmarsh Jottings is hosted in Mountain View so I guess it was some internal goings on between the Google search engine and Blogspot. I wonder if anyone else using HiStats has seen a similar occurrance.

Friday at the Flicks - Wet Feathers

During last Wednesday's persistent rain a group of Goldfinches came to the Birdy Bistro. Also spotted, first time since last Spring, was a Cock Pheasant which sat on the top of the fruit cage for hours in the pouring rain. I often see Wood Pigeons taking advantage of rain to have a shower. They lean over and lift each wing in turn to have a good wash. The Pheasant just sat there looking thoroughly miserable:



During part of the video you can hear a noisy group of House Sparrows which were sheltering in a nearby evergreen bush.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

So Far So Good

Yesterday was the first proper test of the rain gauge with the rain collector outdoors. 'Twas one of those days where it started raining before daybreak, kept it up constantly through daylight hours and continued after dark until about 6 p.m.. Rainfall was never particularly heavy, just persistent.

While it was light enough I took a few photos of the readout. By tea time it had recorded 17 mm (near three quarters of an inch) of rain which should be about right considering how much of the lawn was slowly turning in to a second pond. (background to the illustration) As if the ground wasn't saturated enough already.

I am pleased to say that the real time clock module is keeping excellent time so it was well worth the extra money.