The return of the birds

The guest picture of the day comes from my sister Mary. She and my brother Andrew met up with our daughter Annie and granddaughter Evie at the imposing British Museum earlier in the week.

It got a little warmer today here, but to counterbalance that, it got a little greyer and a lot wetter. Luckily it was still dry as we cycled to church, and it stayed dry long enough for us to cycle back home for a welcome cup of coffee before the rain started.

I had intended to go for a short walk between choirs, but by the time I had drunk my coffee, put a loaf of bread into the bread maker, made some soup, and had a little sit down, the rain was far too heavy to make walking any fun. I made some oatmeal and raisin biscuits instead. I’m still experimenting with this recipe, and I added an egg today and made the biscuits a bit smaller. Mrs Tootlepedal thought that both these were good ideas.

I will add the egg again next time and make the biscuits smaller and neater. They taste very good so they are worth taking a little trouble over.

I looked out of the window after lunch and saw a lone chaffinch beside the feeder . . .

. . . but after some consideration, it didn’t come to the feeder and flew off.

Blackbirds., both male . .

. . . and female . . .

. . . searched for fallen seed in vain.

W hen I looked out of he window a little later, the chaffinch, or a friend, had returned to the willow . . .

. . .but still was not brave enough to visit the feeder.

I was just going to put my camera away when a rather wild eyed goldfinch arrived . . .

. . . and soon, one became two . . .

. . . and then, two became three . . .

. . . and suddenly there were enough goldfinches to start a fight

It was good to see some birds back at the feeder, even though there were not very many. A lone greenfinch arrived . . .

. . . and a robin nearly made it to the feeder . . .

. . . but it was by no means a busy bird day. Still, feeding a few birds is a great deal better than feeding none, so I was grateful.

I was upstairs, getting ready to go to Carlisle for our afternoon choir, when an unusual sight caught my eye.

It was a pair of ducks, busy feeding in our little pond. I hope that they were eating weed and not any frogs. I like ducks, but I would prefer not to see see them in our pond.

The rain continued as we drove to Carlisle, but it politely eased off as we did some shopping at the low priced supermarket that has opened just across the road from our choir venue. Mrs Tootlepedal had hoped to find some useful stuff in the advertised ‘garden event’ in the midl aisle, but there was nothing of interest.

We had both a guest conductor and a guest accompanist for our practice today, and as the conductor thinks that we should be a bit better than we actually are, we had quite a challenging time trying to live up to his expectations. He is coming back again several times in the next months so we will have to up our game. Home practice required.

It was raining again as we drove back to Langholm. This is the first real rain that we have had for some time, so it is probably quite welcome in theory. In practice it made for a very gloomy day. It says that it is going to rain all day tomorrow. That will definitely be too much of a good thing.

The flying bird of the day is one of the goldfinches dodging the raindrops.