Cooking With Richard

I photographed a sparrowhawk catching, killing and eating a starling in the garden today. Well, the killing and the eating kind of overlapped. As you can imagine the starling was not too happy about this situation and made a lot of noise.

Click photos for larger versions.

I’m afraid that the ducks eggs and nest has gone. Something dug under the fence from the next door garden and swiped all the eggs. Only 2 days to go before they hatched as well :-(

Update

The neighbour thinks it was a fox, although maybe it was the neighbour’s dog. You can see the hole and the broken nest here:

and from the other side of the fence:

There was no sign of any eggs or even egg shells.

Mother was OK, but shaken. She sat in the garden for about half an hour like this, just doing nothing:

And that was that.

ガーコ is still sitting on her nest. We’re expecting ducklings towards the end of this week. Here’s the latest photo of (an) egg, she covers them up before she goes out each time.

While you’re waiting, here’s a photo of our lovely long-tailed tits:

Here is M-kun playing Mario Kart Wii, which is bloody good fun:

Looking at the duck’s arse:

The meat is from a great little butchers called JTB Butchers out in the back of beyond:

View Larger Map

Our duck (N-sama is calling her “ガー子”) has now laid a full clutch of at least 10 eggs, see the photo below. N-sama bravely took this photo.

Here she is sitting on the fence and flying off:

N-sama was very brave yesterday and today and went out and took photos of the eggs, while mama-Duck-san was off flying around and eating seaweed and whatever else they do:

Mother duck, taking off:

Sorry, terrible photo but I can’t get too close … There’s a duck nesting in our back garden!

A special treat for the tinybirds:

N-sama bought me a tiny helicopter for Christmas, so here it is in action …

Hmmmmmmmmm…. Second time lucky?

OK … third time?

IT FLIES!!!

Edit:

The Professionals fly:

Documentary about wildlife in Japan (this link will only work for the next 2 or 3 days, so watch it now!)

Click! —> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008cb9b

Previously …

Usaji:

Special OKONOMIYAKI from Hiroshima, with soba noodles:

“Please do not feed pigeons, crows, &c.”
The crow is saying plaintively “If you feed me, I can’t live without your help.”

This is our lovely local heron:

N-sama tried to set fire to the kitchen. I burned my hand on a smoking pan of hot oil: