Dennis comes before Dennis

The guest picture of the day comes from Dropscone’s pre-Brexit visit to Amsterdam.  He felt that I didn’t have enough pigeons on my recent blogs.

We are awaiting the arrival of storm Dennis.  In the meantime, Dropscone came for coffee this morning.  Local readers will be well aware that Dropscone’s Sunday name is also Dennis, and he remarked as he left after coffee, that he thought that Dennis was a pretty silly name for a storm.  Whether Storm Dennis will be a silly storm or a serious one remains to be seen.

As Dropscone and I sipped coffee and ate fine treacle scones, some preliminary rain arrived and Mrs Tootlepedal, who was out doing business on her bicycle got thoroughly soaked before she got home.

As did the birds.  I thought that this picture summed up the day quite well…

…until I took this one.

We had both goldfinches…

…and siskins today…

…and plenty of rain as you can see.

This goldfinch had also been listening to its mother.

Fortunately a very interesting magazine arrived through the post so I had a lot of good reading to help me pass the time while the rain continued but by mid afternoon, the rain had stopped so I put my nose out of the door.

And then followed it with the rest of me, suitably attired for more possible rain.

Our smaller bridges were using both their arches to good effect, both across the Wauchope….

…and the Ewes.

The Esk was slightly less brown than the other two rivers but it wasn’t short of water.

I crossed the river and went up to the High Street.

The data miners at the Archive Centre have been rightly complaining of chilly draughts.  As it happened, Nancy, our treasurer, found that she had a couple of old curtains to spare after improvements to her ancestral castle so Mrs Tootlepedal has been at work with her needle today and one of them is now hanging over one of the draughty doorways….

…with another to follow soon.

I continued my walk over another couple of bridges, noting that the rain had caused any trace of snow to disappear from the town and quite a lot of the snow to disappear from our surrounding  hills too.

Doubtless the melting snow had contributed to the water in the rivers.  The waterside birds had to take care not to get washed away and mostly stood on the river banks.

A lone gull was at its post on the Kilngreen and Mr Grumpy was supervising a group of ducks who had found some relatively calm water to swim in.

He didn’t look to happy about the task.

Considering how high the water level was, I am not surprised.

Looking up at the mast on the top of Warbla, it was hard to imagine that I had been standing there a couple of days ago in brilliant sunshine looking down on a snow covered scene.

The Duchess Bridge, having only one big span, doesn’t care how high the water gets.

It was still pretty gloomy even without any rain but there were plenty of snowdrops about to brighten the afternoon up…

…and I found a couple of tiny hazel flowers to add a splash of colour….

…though the camera and I had to look jolly hard to see them.

In the evening, Mike and Alison came round and as Alison and I had both been practising a bit, we had a most enjoyable time playing our duets.  As we packed our music away, Alison remarked, “Everyone should play duets, ” and I can’t disagree with her.

Stormy Dennis is due to arrive at about breakfast time tomorrow and as we are already pretty soggy, we can only hope that the forecast is once again worse than the actuality.

A siskin, half hidden by a sheet of rain, is the flying bird of the day.