Last night on the way to the beach a newly fledged baby crow was sitting on the handrails of the stairs. We could tell it was baby crow - it still had fluffy tummy feathers.
F on the other hand is very wary of it and won't let me get within a bull's roar of it because she knows she can't fetch me out of it again. That makes going to the beach a game of 'cat and acacia'. There are some extraordinarily good cat-caves in amongst the acacia, if I could only get to them.
Oh, and those caper flowers she let me down on last week.
And finally some Greek Samphire - Kritamo
F's a sucker for baby crows (crows of any size) and this one was hopping down the handrail ahead of us like he knew how best to campaign for hand-outs of cat biscuits. (See any of my earlier blogs on crows (in UK) - cat biscuits will make several appearances. Our lives there seemed to be punctuated by a series of experiments designed to feed cat-biscuits to crows - which F favoured - and prevent pigeons (which she doesn't favour...anywhere) and mobs of squabbling seagulls from scoffing them first).
Crikey that was complicated. In essence: Biscuits out for crows. Pigeons and seagulls eat the biscuits. Design method of reserving biscuits exclusively for crows.
I believe crows can perfectly well fend for themselves (see featured post). F say's that might be true but she was not in the process of fattening pigeons so that they could breed even more pigeons to go and eat the seedlings in her veg garden.
Pigeons must be universal. I notice they have endeavoured a few times to bring down the electricity wire across the street in front of our apartment here in Piraeus. How much to you suppose a few 100 pigeons on a wire weigh?
They have learned to invade our garage space after Effy has left the scene of the feline soup kitchen every morning - and they eat all the catfood; wet food and biscuits.
Pigeons eat meat. Did you even know that?
Pigeons poop on cars. Especially when there are 100's of them sitting on a wire and they all take fright together.
The acacia that overhangs the stairs to the beach (the handrail of which started this Ronnie Corbet style story-telling diversion) now, is flowering.
It's viciously thorny stuff, which doesn't bother me in the least - nor these snails it seems
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteTigger, this is a furbulush post of all your surrounding nature... you might like to join in a weekly Blogville 'hop' with my very exellent pals over at <a href="https://llbinourbackyard.blogspot.com/2020/06/sunny-forecast.html><b>Living Loving Barking in Our BackYard</b>. I know they would so love to meet you and F... Hugs and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx
I think F has added me - but all that html code stuff might be a tech step too far for her. I'll make her keep working on it. How did you learn all the cool stuff you do with your blogs? Furrings and purrings this time. Mr T
DeleteHari OM
DeleteAh well, my first degree was softare engineer... that's what took me to OZ originally, working logistics programming for NCR!
As for the HTML appearing in my comment - sorry about that, I omitted the final back carrot forward slash 'a' forward carrot. You ought to have seen only a link WordPress, it is really just a case of having no fear and pressing all the tools to experiment with them! I was actually thinking that I liked your template, which is one of the newer ones on the dashboard. I 'redecorate' for each season, so need to start thinking what to do for the autumn version this year. I do like to make my pictorial banners and the only thing with this template is that it may not permit me to continue that. I'll experiment! I am happy to exchange emails to help out, if F would like - I can be reached initially via my bio page contacts box. Yxx
Ahhh all is clear - you speak 'foreign' language. We get what you are saying about templates but even those defeat my furparent when it gets beyond the basic . There are so many things to make decisions about and some of them she's not even sure what it was she applied the colour to for instance! She has only 'redecorated' once - we couldn't handle having her do it regularly - life would be miserable.
DeleteIt wasn't your html, that was straightforward enough, it was the bit to paste to blog hop here that was a hop too far. Your offer noted....I'll work on her. Furrings and purrings. Mr T
My brother's cat Merlin tolerates blackbirds hopping into the laundry to eat his cat biscuits, but I think he would draw the line at pigeons!
ReplyDeleteBrave cat. We had a blackbird that used to divebomb me. (It might have had something to do with accessible nest....) Anyway our yard had to be set up with a series of air-raid shelters before I could venture out safely. I think there's an old blog about my air-raid shelters. That blackbird was a menace.
DeleteAnd pidgeons tend to bring their friends and family along too. We were feed a group last year and next thing we knew was we had over 50 of them.
ReplyDeleteDon't they just. How did you move them on?
DeleteWe have introduced species that chase and kill our native birds
ReplyDeleteSo that is why we are trying to grow more native plants to help them survive
We feed the magpies, mostly unintentional, they eat the cat food.
But I have gone out and feed them bits of meat.
One or two have even take the food from my hand
Apparently they remember faces so during the mating season they don’t swoop me.
F says she had pet magpies as a kid - your kind - they were introduced into NZ decades previously. They are great imitators. Her granddad had one that would whistle up the dogs whenever it spied the (optimistic) cat trying to sneak up on it. We didn't know that remember faces bit, but it's not all all surprising. F & M B started feeding the crows at home in UK because they spied one eating my catfood. Everyone told us if you have crows all the little birds will be scared away, but a well fed crow doesn't seem to bother the little birds as we had loads of those on the seed and nut feeders hanging in the trees.
DeleteCrows are so smart! And those awesome. And Gail is wondering if the Greek samphire is edible?
ReplyDeleteKritamo appears to be edible raw - I've seen F eating it (more than once). F says that she first tasted it 'pickled' on a Greek salad instead of the more usual capers; then spent ages trying to find out what it was an where it came from - and there is was growing right in front of us.
DeleteThose caper flowers are beautiful. Our neighbourhood capers haven't flowered yet and I still haven't gathered capers. Maybe too late.
ReplyDeleteBravo for the kritamo.
My Spanish aunty Plil tells us there are 2 kinds of capers - and these apparently aren't the best kind. So maybe yours are.
Delete