Becalmed

Today’s guest picture is another rainbow spotted by a son. This time is was Alistair. He saw a fine double rainbow in Edinburgh today from his car.

After another night of heavy rain here, I was able to empty three inches of rain out of Mary Jo’s scientific rain gauge this morning. It was not long ago that I emptied two inches out of it, so I think it is fair to say that after a very dry February, March has been the opposite. I don’t check the gauge every day but I look at it when we have had a spell of wet weather. Our local weather station has recorded 5 inches of rain since the first of this month, so that looks very similar.

I have walked or cycled 285 miles so far this month, quite often in poor weather, and when I looked out of the window this morning and saw that a very brisk wind was blowing again, my eagerness for another outing was entirely absent. Necessary business took me up to the High Street by way of the Town Bridge . . .

. . . and back by the Suspension Bridge, where I walked up the river for a few yards to take pictures of a couple of black backed gulls . . .

. . . and a lone oyster catcher.

I was going to take a lot of pictures of daffodils when I got back to the garden as there quite a few out now . . .

. . . but they had mostly been so beaten down by the rain and the wind . . .

. . . that I thought that I would wait for a better day.

I devoted the rest of the day to sending off overdue returns, some cooking, a little raking of the proposed wildflower beds on the front lawn, a bit of singing practice, and lots of sitting about.

The cooking consisted of leek, potato, carrot and celery soup for lunch, a slow cooked lamb stew for our tea, a loaf of bread, and an experimental approach to oatmeal and raisin biscuits. The soup and the stew came out well, the loaf was very good, but the biscuits taught me to go back to tried and tested methods next time. Still, we will quite easily be able to eat the slightly unsatisfactory results of the experiment. The cooking was greatly assisted by machines, a slow cooker, a soup maker and a bread machine. The biscuit failure was all my own work.

In between times, I kept an eye on the birds. Goldfinches were back in numbers today again.

A familiar blackbird appeared under the feeder.

I am no expert on birds but I wondered if this was a young male blackbird and not a female as I had first thought. Perhaps a knowledgeable reader could put me right.

The wind blew the feeder about . . .

. . . but the birds were not put off . . .

. . . and there were enough visitors to lead to some action scenes during the day.

A greenfinch looked rather astounded to find that the feeder was occupied.

Like me, Mrs Tootlepedal also had a quiet day in, but she had more excuse after two dress rehearsals and two performances already this week. Tonight is the final show and we will be going off to Edinburgh tomorrow to watch professionals at work. We are going to see the musical “Annie” with a family party in a belated celebration of Mrs Tootlepedal’s significant birthday (which was in November!).

I got a surprise in the afternoon when I looked out at the birds and saw a ‘new’ bird at the feeder.

A redpoll had come to visit, the first of this year. We usually see them in spring so this was very welcome. This one stayed long enough to let me celebrate its arrival with a couple of portraits.

As I had been raking moss out of the front lawn, I would have been very happy to see jackdaws come to lend a hand with some pecking, but few came and they preferred the middle lawn anyway.

Two doves settled in the plum tree and the photo of them showed me that buds are developing on the tree.

As we won’t be back until after midnight tomorrow, any post will be a very truncated affair but I might get the opportunity to show a view or two of Edinburgh in a post from my phone.

The flying bird of the day is another chaffinch. They are good at hovering in strong winds.