A day of rest for the cameras

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony in East Wemyss. He liked the early morning rather ghostly appearance of this ship.

It was dry when we cycled to church to sing in the choir at the Harvest Festival service. It was raining heavily when we came out and cycled home as fast as we could. In order to cater for the needs of the hard of hearing, we use microphones in our services and the minister was having some difficulty with the technology today. We picked up the gist of her remarks in occasional bursts of sound. It kept us in our toes.

I had hoped to get some sunny pictures of birds at the feeder today, but once the rain had started, it was relentless and the light steadily got worse at the day went on. I did see a sparrow curious about what was going on at the other side of the feeder . . .

. . . and a goldfinch who had forgotten to put make up on.

I think that some sparrow upstairs must have made a disparaging remark about that because offence was taken.

It was mostly a day for sparrows when I was watching, with a lot of coming and going . . .

. . . which sometimes led to violence . . .

. . . and there was always one more sparrow waiting in the willows in the background.

I braved the rain for a quick walk round the garden just to get a little colour into the post today. We won’t need to fill the pond for some time . . .

. . . but some flowers were doing their best . . .

. . . and although it was wet, it wasn’t cold and we have roses . . .

. . . and winter jasmine out at the same time.

I was hoping to go for a walk between choirs, but the rain was very discouraging and the light was very poor, so I stayed inside.

In the afternoon we drove down to Carlisle to sing with the Carlisle Community Choir. I was expecting difficult driving conditions. However, in spite of several hours of rain, the roads were not too bad at all and we arrived safely. We had a hard working practice, learning a new song and going over a couple from last year, and then drove home as dusk fell, with the rain having eased off but not gone away.

We had an adventure with the new air fryer for our evening meal. It involved strips of chicken, marinated in olive oil with a touch of curry powder and some soy sauce, cooked in one pot over a bed of couscous, carrots and mushrooms in chicken stock. It was quick, easy to cook and tasted delicious. A definite win.

The flying bird of the day is one of the sparrows.