The Comeback Kid

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew.  He lives in Derby and sent me this picture of Bonny Prince Charlie.  I asked him if the statue celebrated the Prince’s arrival or his departure from the city and he said it was probably both.

It was another frosty morning here but without being seriously cold and the goldfinches were early arrivals at the feeder.

You can see the frost covered lawn in the background.

I had to go up to the Day Centre to collect a key for Mrs Tootlepedal’s embroidery group who have a meeting there tomorrow but I got home in good time to have coffee and treacle scones with Dropscone.

His golf game has been depressing him so much that he has been cycling this week instead of golfing.  I was quite envious.

However, my cough was much better today and I am very hopeful of getting back to regular cycling myself in the near future.

After coffee, I had to wait in for a parcel so I spent some time looking out of the kitchen window in between doing the crossword and some tidying up against the return of Mrs Tootlepedal from the south.

A collared dove was taking life very seriously.

There were a lot of blackbirds about but by the nature of their colouring, they don’t show themselves off to the camera very well on a dull day so I got a lot of fuzzy blackbird pictures.  This was my best effort.

The goldfinches were pushed off the feeder by greenfinches later in the morning.

In our garden feeder world, what a greenfinch wants, a greenfinch gets as there are no other birds that can shift them if they don’t want to be shifted…..

…except perhaps a starling.

I really like the heart motifs on the starlings’ breast.  It makes them look as though they are wearing Christmas jumpers that their grannies knitted for them.

At one point,  I moved the camera to the open back door and got a different background to the feeder shots but there was not much of interest, just the usual chaffinches…

…and a blue tit.

The parcel arrived just after lunch.  It was the refurbished tiller that Mrs Tootlepedal had sent away for servicing as she wants to use it in her winter reshaping of the middle lawn.

As a witty reader has pointed out, she may need renaming as A-tiller the Gardener when she is using it.

I was hoping for a walk when the parcel had been delivered but it started to drizzle and looked so grey that I only went as far as the river to collect a bucket of sand for Mrs Tootlepedal’s path and then I retreated back indoors and looked out of the window instead.

After a while, it had got so gloomy outside that I lit a fire in the front room and wasted a lot of time on the computer.

I was disturbed by a huge racket outside the window and went out to see a large flock of rooks shouting and screaming about something.  I didn’t have the right lens on the camera for whole flock shots….

…but it was quite spectacular and noisy while it lasted.

Somehow, the afternoon contrived to slip away without me making much of a dent on it and after tea, I went down to Carlisle to collect Mrs Tootlepedal from the London train.

She has had a pleasant time in the south, visiting her mother who is 101.  While she was there, our daughter Annabel came out for a visit.  It was her birthday and they had a celebratory meal with Granny and Mrs Tootlepedal’s brother and his wife who share a house with Granny.  Her sister-in-law’s fish pie was delicious.

I was very pleased to have Mrs Tootlepedal at home again  as life is much duller when she is away.

The flying bird of the day is a back door chaffinch.