Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Deserted By The Birds
by admin - 17:28 on 26 January 2014
My black great tit did make it on to the online-only Winterwatch Live programme, for all of three seconds, during a brisk discussion of bizarrely coloured birds.
It was the only highlight of a drab, windy, rainy day which produced a very disappointing Big Garden Birdwatch total consisting entirely of blue, great and coal tits, blackbirds, tree and house sparrows, chaffinches (lots), robins and a couple of yellowhammers. Where were the siskins, green and goldfinches, dunnocks, wrens, treecreepers, pheasants, woodpigeons and woodpeckers we often see? Let alone the long-tailed tits, redpolls, sparrowhawks and other exotic (to us) birdlife?
Doubtless they'll be back tomorrow, probably when I'm out telling U3A members and guests all about self-publishing (2pm at Gordon Hall, Rosemarkie – don't miss it).
Today deserved to be more exciting to mark a notable milestone – it's twenty years ago, this very weekend, that I moved from York to Scotland. Admittedly, my time in Girvan (shudder) was a false start; it wasn't until August that my Highland idyll began, leading to life in The Rural Retreat with Matchgirl and Tess, then Matchgirl and The Pride (whose members recently discovered tuna; Matchgirl has the claw marks on her legs to prove that excited cats will use any means to climb on to worktops).
Maybe I'll plan a proper celebration in August. It's a good excuse to spend a night at Boath House.
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