Flying visit

Today’s picture taken by Mrs Tootlepedal’s mother, shows our son, Al and his wife, Clare getting ready to drive back to Glasgow after a flying visit to have lunch and see Granny.

It was another lovely day and I just had time to go round the morning run with Dropscone before getting ready to welcome our visitors.  It had rained overnight and the roads were wet so I was pleased to have my new mudguard in place.  It has stayed quite warm over the past few nights and as a result it was a much more kindly temperature when we set out than we had any right to expect at this time of the year.  Dropscone kindly left some scones he brought with him even though he didn’t stop for coffee and I made sure that they went to a good home.

We had had a couple of fleeting visits from a goldfinch recently so I had thought yesterday that it was probably time to put a nyjer seed feeder out to see what would happen.  The first visitor was a siskin but it had come and gone before I could get the camera out which was disappointing. However I didn’t have long to wait before a goldfinch had found the feeder too.

I don’t know how they know that I have put the feeder out.  During the rest of the day, there were fairly frequent visits but nothing that looked like a crowd.

The one on the right is getting stuck in

The rather ungainly tray is there to catch the discarded seeds. A niger seed feeder is a very messy thing and it hurts Mrs Tootlepedal to see her nice garden filling up with rubbish.  It also hurts my pocket if half the seeds I buy are discarded uneaten.  I am going to try to reach a more elegant solution to the problem if I can.

I was trying to discover if there is a way of telling a male from a female goldfinch and it says that the male is distinguished by the red patch extending further behind the eye.  The pictures used to demonstrate this difference were barely distinguishable.

On that basis, this pair may be a female on the left and a male on the right but there is not much in it.

We had a most enjoyable visit from Alistair and Clare for which Mrs Tootlepedal had cooked an excellent lunch and we were pleased to catch up with their news.  They couldn’t stay long because they had to get back to Glasgow in time to do some shopping and visit the municipal dump (which surprisingly stays open until 8pm everyday of the week including Sundays).  Being retired makes you forget the time pressures which people who have to go to work through the week labour under.  Their pressures are exacerbated by living in Glasgow and working in Edinburgh.

I found a moment to see if the yellow rosebud had flowered and was interested to see the contrast between the old and new roses. You would hardly think that they were the same plant.

Mrs Tootlepedal tells me that the nasturtiums should be well over by now in a normal year but they are still going strong.

They may not last much longer as the forecasters are promising a frost by the middle of next week.

These may be the last fuchsia blossoms too. I don't think the bud on the right will make it.

The fuchsias in the garden have really done well in spite of the cool summer.  The clematis too have thrived even though this one looks a little bit worse for wear.

With the novelty of the goldfinch visits, I didn’t pay much attention to the other feeder today but did take one picture just so the birds there wouldn’t feel neglected.

The coal tit is looking to see where all these damned goldfinches are coming from

While we were talking after lunch, my son Alistair took this picture of an old master in the corner of the room.

I thought it only fair to take one of him..