Daisies! (two) - Spring!

Bags will you ever gather all these poems together at all? I'd love a copy. Think of it as charity to those of us stuck in the frozen north, needing to dream about spring!

- Nice having kindling that doesn't need chopping and splitting!

Westerlies giving us a real blow around today, interspersed with fleeting, heavy showers.

Today's fire kindling is more dry stalks
Of last year's red campion,
Sage twigs, astilbe stalks, dry grasses,
And stuff the starlings drop
From their nest hole in the eaves –
Wiry, rough grass, pampas perhaps
From a clump down the hill.
And there are twigs
Blown off the old cherry
In the easterlies
Bringing dryness to the wet west,
And making the house hum
Like a bee.

We have a lot of dunnocks and sparrows and I have trouble telling them apart. They seem to hang around in a flock together. Dunnock sex life sounds very practical FloweroftheWest. I wonder if blackbirds do the same. There is one female and two males here which seem to hang around together.

We still have thick snow, but I noticed this morning that the sheep lower down the valley have been shorn.

There was a flock of long-tailed tits around my bird feeder this morning. Last weekend, in a wood near Sandhurst we were surrounded by the sounds of woodpeckers. I thought there were probably at least two pairs.

Oh yes! I forgot the woodpeckers (great spotted), and the coal tits, and great tits, and blue tits, and blackbirds.

Definitely spring

You probably have one skulking hopefully in the hedge somewhere Galen.

On Saturday I heard a wood pecker, brought a smilt to my face. Snow showers here today and back to grey after the sunshine of the weekend in Northumberland.

See? Six!

Very noisy blackbird at five to see this morning. I think I'll report him to the noise abatement society.
I have only two dunnocks?

And lucky us hearing (and sometimes seeing) them!

Lucky Owls.

We usually have loads of dunnocks but they haven't been very visible of late. However, there have been pairs of wrens, robins, song thrushes, bullfinches, chaffinches, house sparrows, carrion crows, wood pigeons, and herons. Probably others too, which I've missed.

And the state of the garden – holes and scratchings in the moss everywhere – suggest that this year's bank vole population will be quite high. Owl food

Three Dunnocks chasing around our garden, her twirling her naughty little tail. Did you know that Dunnocks (Hedge Sparrows) are promiscuous (Well she is) She has an Alpha male and a Beta male hiding in the bushes. She flirts with both and when Alpha male is off for a while she twirls her tail at skulking Beta, he mates with her and skulks off again to hide. Alpha comes back and know what a tart he is married to and pecks at her cloaca (where the egg comes from for the uninitiated) causing the important sac which the other guy has deposited and mates with her. This is very important as it means that two males think they are the parents of the coming chicks and that all three adults will feed the chicks (also probably that two males will feel the female while brooding and take part in the brooding of the eggs)

Anyway, That was my first sign of Spring being in our garden!

Nice poems . You couldn't sit outside up here but it's springlike.
Yes!!!

Planted a quarter acre to potatoes, by hand. I may never be able to straighten up ever again.

A perfect spring afternoon here. I took a chair to a sheltered spot in the sun and read my Kindle for a couple of hours. Very peaceful. Wish I could be as inspired as you, Bags and Soop.

Sat outside for an hour! Got my vit D topup.

Mr soop in the garden
tying up, pulling up, propping up
things that need doing.
He whistles while he works -
the finches, thrush, blackbird, tits and robin all join in.
Rory lies in the warm gravel
one eye shut
the other half-open...
just in case he misses something
that, as top cat, he should be aware of.

Yay! I like it a lot.

Shooting arrows at a target
From twenty-five metres.
In the background
Woodpecker drills,
And chaffinch chirrups
Answering the arrow thuds.

Spring in North Suffolk . Went for a walk round the fields and admired the primroses, tough little plants. There is still the odd lump of snow in the ditches. Later sat in a sheltered part of back garden, admittedly with coat and scarf on, and basked in the sunshine, along ewith the cats. Felt soooo good.

Spring sunshine at last in Northumberland! The crocuses have finally managed to open before they are over, no blossom out yet except for the winter flowering cherry which has been cheerfully in flower for weeks. The countryside is still brown and yellow, not much green to be seen anywhere yet.

Another sunny day in Kintyre. Some interesting cloud formations. The sea is "skittish".