Where has the month gone? Lots of humans 'take holidays' this month it seems and F has been working two jobs throughout - week after week a different person to 'cover' for.
I meanwhile have been supervising birdfeeders from my 'hide'. We still have plenty of wood pigeons (in my experience there is no season that doesn't have wood pigeons on the lawn), dozens of starlings arrive every morning for breakfast. They seem not to be able to go anywhere without 'holding hands' but they squabble noisily with their mates, and throw food out of the feeders to crows and pigeons waiting on the ground below. The crows are always jumpy under the bird feeders, the starlings famously expel other waste that the crows do not want stained onto their smart shiny black coats.
The robin, sparrows, tits (3 kinds - the flock of long tailed tits has returned), a pair of blackbirds, occasional visits from our woodpecker with the red hat, and the chattering of a wren we have never actually seen are our daily tally. Apart from the gluttonous seagulls (which F still chases away), that is our lot; but they are still powering through several kilos of suet pellets, fat balls, seed, cat biscuits, apples, and dried insects/mealworms every week. Usually by now in a summer they have wearied of such food and gone in search of the fresh and wholesome that nature provides in more abundance at this time of year.
June's heat and drought has subsided into a July of enough moisture to keep the lawns green and the fruit filling out.
Blackberries are ripening and there is a race between F and a squirrel to gather and consume the big fat ripening ones on the thornless blackberry on our fence. Yes, there is also a squirrel competing with the ground birds for whatever drops - or is thrown out there by F.
It doesn't eat cat biscuits, but it is definitely partial to F's blackberries.
F collects litter off the roadsides on her trips between the house and the allotment, or the rail station and home. We have been studying the cans - aluminium ones that contained things that some humans drink. 'Energy' drinks seem to dominate the haul - as many as 75% of what she picks up are cans from energy drinks. It never seems to provide its consumers with enough energy to carry their cans to the nearest bin (in some cases merely metres away), so we wonder it is in fact mis-labelled.
Energy is under-rated. I conserve as much of mine as possible. One simply cannot afford to waste the stuff......
Cats are masters of energy conservation! Unlike humans who conserve energy instead of chucking away their garbage in the container right there. Thanks for the bird observations.
ReplyDeleteI have perfected energy conservation Boud-Aunty. As for garbage - humans have probably always chucked stuff out - if it is really old we treasure it, call it midden heaps, dig around in it and make assumptions about the way they lived. In future the assumption about the way current humans lived will be: 'wastefully'.
DeleteI am totally with you there Mr T on the subject of energy conservation. Save as much of it as you can.
ReplyDeleteThose energy drinks should just be renamed to Sugar Water.
Some of them have something else in there tat makes people a bit sleepless....
DeleteYou've got a lot of supervising to do with all those birds. Such a variety. It's hard to imagine. Crows and hawks seem to be our lot at the moment.
ReplyDeleteLitter, litter everywhere. Good on F for getting rid of some of it.
We like crows and hawks too. There were crows on the beach outside our place in Greece - one used to sit on the stairs railing to get fed catfood by the people who took catfood onto the beach (for the cats of course). As for litter - F saw a TED talk once on which a woman was asked to give advice to her godson - she was advocating for kindness, consideration, commitment to community and suggested (among other things) to pick up a piece of litter every day. A simple act, not time consuming but an act of kindness in your community. Imagine if everyone (even 50% of people) picked up one piece of litter every day.
DeleteNow the schools have broken up life should ease up a little. People go on holiday in late June/early July because travel is cheaper.
ReplyDeleteThe birds in our garden are watchful but have still been very busy. The blackbirds come down to bathe in the pond and the titmice are feastings on insects, which saves the insects feasting on us.
This time last year we were roasting - this year, it's much cooler, thank goodness.
We have bats eating insects as well - which helps a lot. We can't feed the bats so we grow plants to attract their favorite insects, and then have to put up with what that does to our own environment! (not all of it bad)
DeleteHari Om
ReplyDeleteMy oath, Tigger mate, your bird tally is quite something! Stellar birding skills. I hope you are passing on some of your saved energy to F. Sounds to me like she needs all she can get. Hut and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx
Long hours spent in my hide Yam-Aunty. I want F to set me up with a cat-sized pair of binos now. xxx Mr T
Deletenothing compares to the beauty of a tiger cat on a leopard bed! you look Marvelous! it is surprising about the litter that is every where and you are right, close to the trash bins. even the raccoons and possums contribute to litter by dumping the bins that people put things inside. city is to cheap to buy locked top but pays employees to turn them upright and refill them with the litter that once was inside.. there are many volunteer groups that constantly travel our beaches doing the job others refuse to do.
ReplyDeleteat least we don't have raccoons and possums, but we do have seagulls and foxes who show an unhealthy level of interest in human rubbish. Rubbish-walks are becoming a 'thing' here. F recalls a similar drive in NZ in the 1970's, but the amount of litter about the place then was only a fraction of what is is now. The food packaging that exists now is exponentially more than it was 40-50 years ago.
DeleteSomeone should make energy drinks for cats. Not me - I'm too tired.
ReplyDeleteCats don't need energy drinks Tasker - we are all coiled springs, loads of internal conserved energy to call on.
DeleteAh, energy. My specialist subject.
ReplyDeleteGail always marvels at how two bowls of kibble a day can be converted into so much bounce.
Toodle-oo!
Nobby.
PS Gluttonous seagulls. Is there any other variety?
F's Dad used to make the same observations about sheepdogs. He wished he could run his motor vehicles as efficiently. As for seagulls and gluttony.... dead ones perhaps?
DeleteYour backyard sounds like it would keep me amused for hours too.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes conserving energy at the same time.
Energy drinks should be banned. They’re actually very very bad for you.
It turns out Angela - that energy drinks (in moderation) are very good for people with ADHD - and we wonder how many, undiagnosed, have accidented on the discovery that an energy drink or two helps them cope in a world geared to 'neuro-normal'.
DeletePS we also wonder what percentage of the human population might be on the ADHD scale (diagnosed or not) and where they tend to fall in the economic welfare distribution of humans....(recent experience of family members diagnosed well into adulthood and a turn around in their mental wellbeing when they began to understand why and how they were different).
DeleteWe call that Cat TV, sometimes Tiger will sit on his bed staring out the window chattering at the birds sitting around the bird feeder. It's so funny to hear him watching them. Energy drinks..hmmm a sore subject with me. Because I worked in dentistry for 5 years I've seen the effects that they and fizzy drinks have on teeth and it's not good so I'm not one to every drink them.
ReplyDeleteI would be sitting with you Tigger (conserving my energy!) and watching all those birds. At the moment, I like to watch the wax-eyes feasting on a bag of fat swinging in a neighbour's tree (nothing in our lawn, as Millie is too much of a hunter).
ReplyDelete