A murder... and some nicer stuff

I have written about the big group eating with the Divines. These were in addition to the Divines!!!

When I used to see the Feisties last year, there were never this many.

On weird bird stuff, my brother says the little birds down his way keep on tapping on the windows and the wing mirrors of the car. They've never known the like. All the time, tap tap tap.

On anxiety-making bird stuff, when I got home from work and went inside to sort the cats, eat food and... well, clean the house... I had decided there was no time to feed the crows. As soon as I sat down after all that to type, I looked out the window and saw the Driveways eyeing me from an aerial across the road.

My great bird news is that Bob the robin is now taking suet pellets from my hand! Twice he hovered next to the hand but turned away and fled. Then... a wild bird!!... feeding from my hand. Annoyingly, the lady at the bird seed place said, when I told her, "Oh, so many people are saying that to me. I obviously never sit still for long enough." Lady: you don't have to sit still. You hold up your hand and call out Hey, Bob! Come on, Bob! At least, that's what I do. I have been saying Hello, Bob to him for as long as I've known him and so he knows that's what I call him. He won't come if I do not look at him and call him. Mind you, it's up to him. If he's on singing duty, I am completely irrelevant.

BTW, in Wild Isles, David Attenborough's series on British wildlife, he says about how robins used to get worms in winter from following around boars who were turning over the earth and they see gardeners doing the same thing and so they follow them now that there are so few boars. He said, I love this, "To a robin, a human with a spade is just a pig on two legs." Take that, human exceptionalists!!!

Not a good painting - it's at the wrong angle, the head's wrong, I screwed up the eye and I tried to rub out the pencil while the paint was still wet. Never mind.

Weird deer news: a roe deer standing on the bank next to the A14 just looking over the fence into the fields. I called the Highways Agency as Animals in Need said they couldn't help. I hope she just jumped the fence. She could have. But she was just sort of standing there looking relaxed.

This did not have a happy ending. Next time I drove to the hospital I saw her five-day-old corpse by the side of the dual carriageway. Not so very relaxed then.

There's a new badger sett at the Reserve, which is exciting.

And the field mouse in the garden pokes her head out when I lay out the seeds at the back.

This brought another unhappy ending as the cat killed one of her friends and left the body under the bird feeders. The foxes took it. .