I went on a journey

Today’s picture, amazingly enough, is a blue footed booby from the Galapagos Islands sent to me by Dropscone’s niece and taken by her sister-in-law. This is a step up from a sparrow.

I can’t imagine why it is called blue footed.

When Dropscone heard that I was putting a picture of a blue footed booby on the blog, he asked why I had been running about in the snow with no shoes on.

My  journey was not as exotic as a visit to the Galapagos Islands, as I was only going to Carlisle to take my sisters and my stepmother to the train.  We were a bit alarmed when we woke up to find a heavy fall of snow in progress. I walked up to the town and I was cheered up when Liz in the paper shop told me that the boys coming home from the ASDA backshift had told her that there was no snow in Carlisle.

The siskins and goldfinches were frantically eating niger seeds which made me worry that perhaps the weather was going to get worse.

The siskins were unusually ferocious at keeping off would be usurpers and this third siskin was reduced to picking up scraps.

However, we got organised and left on time and, sure enough, the roads were clear soon after we left the town. I had left a little spare time in case Carlisle was mobbed by bargain seeking shoppers but either the sales hadn’t started or the shoppers weren’t shopping, because the town was very quiet.

The only excitement was that Pat had left her handbag behind. We discovered this just after it was too late to turn back and get it and still catch the train. We carried on, I dropped off  Susan and Mary, my sister,s and then went home with Pat, picked up her handbag and then returned to Carlisle. The roads were even clearer this time. In the event, Pat had no trouble catching a later train and had a very pleasant journey to London in contrast to my sisters who had a rather eventful trip due to taking bad advice from a train guard to try to catch a non existent train. In the end she arrived in London only an hour later than the other two.

 

We were particularly blessed with Dropscone’s nieces today with the picture of the blue footed booby sent digitally from one and a personal visit from another, pictured here on the right with her friend Ben and my daughter in law Clare on the sofa.

 

 

When I got back, I found that my son, Alistair, had taken this shot of an angry siskin exchanging remarks with another .

I had a go and found this pair flapping vigorously. They are not flapping at each other but  at would be intruders coming from opposite sides of the feeder.

We had an excellent lunch of cold this and that and settled down for a comatose sofa-bound afternoon watching both real and animated penguins.

We roused ourselves sufficiently to have a Pakistani goat curry for our tea (surprisingly not having a goat about us, we substituted turkey for the goat). After tea, we had a game of ‘Oh Hell’ with just the four of us and I am happy to report that this evening, skill rather than luck was the order of the day. (Guess who won.)