Cooking With Richard

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:

… sounds like a dodgy pub, and currently it’s a googlewhack. And somehow it reminds me of the sign by the Cat and Lion pub in Stretton which I used to drive past every day on my way to work at Daresbury Laboratory. The sign showed a lion “lying down” with a lamb, reminiscent of the Tate and Lyle logo.

I digress.

On Thursday we had roast shoulder of lamb which was most excellent.

Today this lovely moggy turned up in our back garden. Actually he was “lying down” with the little sparrows, but we’ll forgive him that because it’s part of his nature:

One day I’ll be allowed to own a cat. It’s past time.

Tring has a small but rather wonderful Natural History Museum. Actually it is more properly known as the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum, which is now managed by the Natural History Museum in London. The collection is marvellously Victorian — 4000 stuffed animals, a spectacle rather than an education.

This tiny fellow turned up in the garden today. We think he’s a garden warbler, a plain tiny brown bird who migrates to the UK during Spring and Summer only.

The photos aren’t really good because he uses the cover of the trees and bushes and doesn’t come out.

There were plenty of common birds in the garden today, including this beautiful juvenile blue tit. I can tell this is a juvenile because his (or her?) crown isn’t yet blue, but more of a black colour.

This is one of the blackbirds’ daughters. She seems to like to sit around in the garden in the late afternoon just sunbathing. Crazy …

Click for large image

I counted 25 starlings in the garden today. There appeared to be two adult pairs, and the rest were juveniles. Noisy.

Here’s that famous video of Bill Oddie watching starlings:

This is what it looked like last year:

Ahhhhhh …..

(more…)

Baby bluetit in the tree:

Two baby bluetits eating:

This is probably their mum:

What you looking at?

Greattit mum and baby. Update – I think these are actually Coal tits:

Look at that sky …

Zoomed:

Squid:

I was trying to feed them nori:

She’s beautiful, and bold.

Her male friend here.

In the garden today, a male blackbird:

and a robin:

and their lunch:

[Editor’s note: The next two photos look quite similar, sorry if you can’t tell the difference]

and another blackbird:

This prompted a small WTF moment when I was in the supermarket today:

Jeyes Fluid “Kills bird flu”. Well I’m sure it does. So does bleach, or probably washing up liquid.

Previously … swan feeds its pet fish, and video of our ducklings.

Video of ducklings

An appearance by a chaffinch. We have them living in the high trees around the house but they very very rarely come down to ground level. Well we had a chaffinch couple feeding on the ground today. I got these photographs with my 300mm lens from the upstairs window:

A greattit feeding:

I was watching the bluetits today. They are proud and happy parents, but I saw the mother (below) who had previously been feeding her chick sitting on top of the tree, chirping desperately. It may be that she was looking for her baby …