Babies

Well, nothing to do with the garden, wildlife or house for once!

My brother's wife had their first child last Saturday, so my week off work has been filled with babies, well I've seen him three times since Sunday (born Sat night). I believe when he was born he weighed in at 7lbs6oz and has since lost a little bit of weight- as expected and is now around 7lbs2oz.

He's a long baby, so already out grown the newbown clothes as his legs are very long [: Well, with both mum and dad being 6 foot I can't say I'm surprised!


Every time I've been round he's been a little angel, and it would seem he dislikes night as he always starts up around 6pm and doesn't settle until around midnight! That'll be fun when my brother goes back to work...

Big yawn

And looking pleased with himself...

I've never been a broody person, but I am rather disturbed just how I'm reacting to the little fella, I guess that's the downside to having an older brother- you find yourself doing things much sooner than planned! It's all very well going round and cooing, giggling at the cute clothes and such but the reality is the part that scares me, so I think I'm safe for another few years at least!

Warbler? Updated!

I think I might've seen some sort of warbler in the garden this morning… I popped outside as I do every morning to slug/snail hunt before setting off to work and it seemed rather busy in the area with birds singing - something that's been lacking for the last few weeks or so.

There was one call I didn't recognise and thought it may be one of the tits - although not the usual tune or perhaps a song thrush as it was very melodious compared to the finch calls.
I came back inside and saw a Coal tit come down, and again a few minutes later with some blue tits (on a side note, in Scotland the Coal tits were always picked on by the blue and great tits, yet here they seem to be happy in a flock.. odd).

Anyway, something then flutters into their hiding Hawthorn - all the birds usually fly into this before coming down onto the feeder. I check things out with the camera and thought I could see a mystery bird, I have photos but they were too small to tell for sure on the screen and most of the time it wasn't facing the camera - grrr.

So I'll have to upload them tonight to check what it could've been. I thought the warblers would have gone by now? Unless it's passing through, it'll be a shame if it doesn't hang around for a couple of days at least.

Right, I've uploaded them now... What do we think?

I'm thinking Garden Warbler just going by the song I could hear as it sounded like a song thrush or a blackbird would sing, but there appear to be two different ones... Is one a juvenile and the other the adult?

Please bare in mind these images are heavily cropped, just to enable you to actually see the bird...

Showing the back

The second bird, check the eyebrow compared to the other... Also very yellow.

Holiday to Scotland

Ok, so I’ve been away in Aviemore for the last week…

The weather has been mixed, with yesterday being drizzley – the light type that seems to soak you, so we pretty much had to have a wet playtime ie stayed indoors most of the day after a quick trip out to Grantown-on-spey. Today started off dull but began to clear, then rained and by the time I had to catch the train we had patches of blue sky as the clouds were breaking up.

The train was slightly delayed, but not an issue as I had an hour in Edinburgh before my connection, so happily I went along. We then had an announcement that there were problems at Edinburgh Haymarket with flooding and to expect delays. I asked the conductor as he came round how long these delays were, he said up to and over an hour in some cases… Oh dear.

So, after battling our way through to Waverley as being marooned in water between the two stations, I arrived. Only to then be met by all trains south-bound were cancelled as there was major problems at Newcastle and announcements claiming ‘please do not travel today unless absolutely necessary’

Well, I would never have ended up here if you had told me at Aviemore!!

I was fuming, why couldn’t they have made an announcement up there that no trains were travelling, or even that there was flooding?? I could have stayed up there an extra night and avoided the need to book a hotel room for the night in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival!!

Absolutely atrocious, fair enough, they did have a coach service running to Newcastle, but as the motorway into Edinburgh was also flooded, I imagine it would’ve been at least a 2/3/4 hour journey to Newcastle, then to fight onto a train a long with hundreds of others, I’d be surprised if I even managed to catch the last train home, either that or I wouldn’t be arriving home until the early hours of the morning…

So here I am in a nice hotel room, it’s not massive as it was the last single available but it’ll do for me as I’m grateful to even have one. And yes, it has given me the opportunity to see the festival, but I can’t really enjoy it because my bag is so amazingly heavy from the laptop and camera + lenses.

Anyway, onto the holiday… No photos just yet, because I forgot the camera cable like a nonce, but I do have some nice photos… Alas, no crested tits this time round at Abernethy, although I did get to see the Osprey actually on the nest for once! I also *think* I saw a Goldcrest, all I know it was a teeny tiny little bird in the trees, but the photo doesn’t show the face as it was looking up at the time. We’ll see once I have it downloaded onto the lappie. Plenty of red Squirrels around the cottage this year, at least two nursing females, I think they were both pregnant again though because they had the same bumps on their sides like a gerbil does when carrying, we also had two different youngsters and a male.