A baker’s dozen

Today’s guest picture comes from Eike from the Bergisches Land, a low mountain range region within the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He is the son of long time reader Zyriacus. Knowing my fondness for fungi, he has kindly sent me some local examples from his area.

The weather this week has been better than the forecast led us to expect, and we enjoyed another reasonably warm day today, with only occasional rain.

There was enough rain in the morning to keep us inside for coffee and persuade me to do some Archive work at the computer. I put a parish magazine from 1969 on to the group’s webpages. Sandy is steadily scanning a big pile of these magazines and he performs wonders of OCR on the scans and then does the HTML formatting for the pages. All that is left for me to do is provide an updated link and then add them to our site and give them a swift check.

I then put a week of the newspaper index into the database (without making any careless errors) so it was a satisfactory use of indoor time.

In between doing the crossword, drinking coffee, eating cake, and the archive work, I looked out of the window from time to time.

We are getting more regular visits than usual from members of the tit family at the moment and they were the most frequent visitor at first today.

I saw several coal tits..

…and at least one great tit…

…and some blue tits too. The blue tits joined with siskins, great tits and sparrows to have a good look round…

… before they flew to the feeder.

The light was rather poor which made getting flying bird shots tricky. This was a pity as the tits did a lot of flying to and fro as they can’t swallow the seeds straight away…

…and have to take a single seed away to peck at it on a branch nearby.

There were busier moments though…

…and sometimes, very busy moments.

Mrs Tootlepedal cooked a nourishing pot of a vegetable soup with rice which was called ministrina in the recipe. It was more like a vegetable porridge than a sipping soup but it was extremely tasty.

Fortified by this, I went for a cycle ride as the sun had come out and it was a pleasant day. I chose to ride the loop round the new windfarm at Solwaybank in the (vain) hope of seeing some actual turbine building going on.

I did see a buzzard as I stopped on Callister hill…

…but once again I missed the turbine action and the thirteenth tower had its hat on but not its blades.

I hoped that the crane would be in action hauling a blade or two up by the time that I got round to the other side of the site but all was quiet when I got there. The sun had come out again though, so that was a bonus.

There are obviously more turbines to go up as I could see bits and bobs lying about ready to be erected as soon as I had gone.

It is very frustrating that they have managed to put up thirteen towers without me once seeing the crane in action is spite of frequent visits.

I continued on my ride, happy enough to be out on a fine day in October, pleasantly warm and with a helpful wind blowing me home, through leafy tunnels…

…and over open moor….

…with excellent views towards Tinnis Hill on the far side of the Langholm Moor…

…and a sunny four mile finish down Wauchopedale at eighteen miles an hour.

That is the sort of finish that makes any ride, even a slow one like today’s, feel good.

I got back in time to enjoy the finish of both the Giro and the Vuelta and admire some excellent levelling off of the drive beside the newly laid slabs which had been effected by Mrs Tootlepedal and her teaspoon. (She may have used a pick and a rake too.)

There was time for a walk round the garden before the evening Zoom with my siblings.

My sister Mary, who had been to a very well organised and socially distanced exhibition at the National Gallery, was able to show us some more pictures of how deserted central London is at the moment. It is positively eerie to see the familiar sights without a tourist to be seen and very few other people either.

One greenfinch was kind enough to fly slowly towards the feeder and it is the flying bird of the day.