Merry Christmas

and a Happy New Year from all the Wildlife....

And from us too!

Starting to Twitter...

Everyone seems to twitter these days, so we thought we'd join in...
but only on this blog... and only about wildlife.

Twitter one:
We saw a Little Egret [Egretta garzetta] Aigrette garzette fly down the valley today....
now that might not seem much... they are quite common...
but not along here... it is the first we've seen...
but completes our set of egrets.

One of my brother's pictures... the yellow feet are very clear in this shot.

Twitter two:
A vast flock of waders grouped overhead last night...
three or four hundred... in bunches and 'W's...
too dark to see anything but silhouettes...
most probably Golden Plover looking for an open field...
and then settling to roost for the night.

Twitter three:
We now have a huge number of Great Tits [Parus major] Mésange charbonnière visiting...
we've put the feeders out again.

Oh me darlin', oh me darlin'....

....oh me darlin' Clementine.
It being the approach to the season when reason goes out of the window for a few weeks, we purchased 2.5 kilos of Moroccan Clementines... sorry, I bought... Pauline said "Alright then, go on!"
Now you might be thinking that this should be on "de la Bonne Bouffe"... but no it belongs here... my precious Clemmies have had a '49er at work.

There's something crawling on my box!

Winter is the season when all species hibernate to one extent or the other... some like us 'oomans' just changing our way of life for cosy armchairs, radio, records and books... some, like the Cranes, Swallows and Turtle Doves seek warmer climes... but some like bats and moths shut themselves down and wait for warmth... as do Shield Bugs.

So now is the time when Shield Bugs come into our lives... and if you have uplighters with halogen bulbs in they rapidly live up to their American name of Stink Bug as they suicidally fry themselves.

But back to the '49er... it had found its goldmine... one of my clementines.

You can see his "beak" piercing the skin...

Cheeky b'stard!
I thought that he had probably struck oil rather than gold... orange oil.
That's all okay then...
I don't eat the skin...
let it tank up before hibernating.
Or kill itself on 'cleaning fluid'...
we seem to have the new Sloe-Wino Bug [Dolycoris minesashotus] Punaise d'alchool...

Sunk right in... drinking Kia-Ora...

He was still there in the morning... but it was immediately obvious that he wasn't drink oil any more... his 'beak' was sunk much deeper into the clementine... was he still alive?

A side shot of him taking a short shot!!

I stroked an antenna with the tip of a biro... and the wino waved a rear leg at me as if to say "G'way!Cntyoushee I'mbisshy"...

Just before he left...

"No, little fellow, you are now drinking MY clementine... " was my response as I touched his nose with the same biro... it was fascinating to watch the beak retract and then fold under the head.
With all the dignity he could muster he slowly and carefully marched off the fruit!

For those interested, he was in fact a Sloe Bug [Dolycoris baccarum]... there is no French name for him... he's just another punaise... but at least the Latin name points toward his love of a drink!!

Urrrrg! Grey... no fishing.

This is the view from the bedroom window this morning... in fact all this morning and into the afternoon!

Somewhere, beyond the trees, is a wood!

I sat there, in bed, watching pigeons and jays come into view... and out of view... especially the pigeons who were flying found in circles... at one point a flight of grey ghosts flew past the other side of the trees.... urrrrg! Grey...

We were going to Le Louroux this morning for the "Grand Emptying"....
but visibility was very poor, as you can see, and the temperature outside was only zero centigrade...
it reached a whole three by noon!!

Also my shattered ankle was telling me that the weather was damp [as if I couldn't work that out for myself!]....
so with shooting paines [oops, Freudian slip there... thinking of fireworks to brighten the day] shooting pains making driving difficult we stayed in.

However, I did find some photographs of the Golden Plover/Lapwing flock I mentioned in the last post... taken in March 2010.... so here they are:

Click to enlarge these... the Golden Plover are the pale birds... and you can see why the Lapwing is also the Green Plover.

About a quarter of the way from the left in the first picture... and a third in on this... is a breeding plumage Golden Plover.

And in this picture he has walked fully into view... just at the bottom, in the group of three,  on the left...
he has a black belly, and a white patch just under the golden back.

Not my best pictures, but these were still a way off!