birds and beasties

Now that winter is properly here, we're feeding the birds.  There was a spotted woodpecker on the table a couple of days ago, tucking into the lard with porridge oats.  I can't tell the difference between Greater and Lesser, but think it's fair to assume that it was whichever is the more common.  They seem to have had a good year, and when it was warm enough to sit outside watching the chickens, the Systems Administrator used to see them quite regularly around the garden.  The main visitors to the table are blue and great tits, robins, chaffinches, and hedge sparrows, plus a few goldfinches and on one or two occasions the long tailed tits.  Last winter when it got really cold the blackbirds came, but there are still lots of berries in the wood and garden, and they don't generally bother with our offerings until they've stripped the shrubs.  The coal tits are shy, and will only feed on the table if things get really tough in the wild.

The cats are keen to lick the lard with porridge oats, given half a chance, and I found the big tabby with his face in the bowl of bird food on the kitchen worktop.  The first time we saw his mother, she was sitting up on a kitchen unit with her long snout in a bowl of fruit while her doting owner enquired whether she had eaten that waspie, so we knew then what to expect.  Some of the larger birds would like to take a big piece of lard and porridge oats away, to eat later, but it breaks up, and I found a lump on the steps down to the conservatory, where the black cat was licking at it.  I put it back on the bird table.  I do not believe that lard with porridge oats is good for cats.

To try and stop the cats from gulping their food, in case that is what was making them sick, we have been doling out tins in small spoonfuls, and making them wait between courses while they work out whether they are actually still hungry.  I've read accounts by people who grew up in large families of how they learnt to gulp their food, so as to be in the running for seconds before their siblings had eaten everything, and I think the same thing can happen when you have five cats.  The new feeding regime is working in the sense that there haven't been any more pools of cat sick for several days, but it means that feline breakfast stretches over an hour and a half, and throughout the day whichever of us comes within reach of the food dishes is likely to be met by at least one furry accuser, staring meaningfully at the empty plates, or the door of the cat food cupboard.

There was ice on the pond yesterday morning, real ice that hadn't melted completely by the end of the day.  The trouble with ice is that the grey tabby, who appears to believe that she ought to be able to walk on water and that it is only by some quirk or error that this ability has been denied to her, likes to sit in the middle of the pond when it's frozen.  With ice like we had last winter this isn't an issue, as I could have sat on the pond myself if I'd wanted to (I didn't) but with thin ice who knows?  When she gets an idea in her head she is the most obstinate creature I know, but I have no idea how good her judgement is as to whether ice will bear her weight, which is something under 5kg.  She is now 12, desperately skinny and perpetually hungry, and we never expected her to make old bones, but though she seems to have a frail constitution she has a will of iron.  It would be a pity if she drowned or froze to death falling through the ice on the pond.

As it was drizzling and cold I thought I would go and see if I could get some cheap camellia pots at one of the local garden centres, that used to be good for cheap pots.  They didn't have any suitable pots, or even any space in the car park, and I had to go and park round the corner and walk up the road.  What they did have was a grotto with Father Christmas and his Reindeer, with a very long queue of parents and small children trailing back from it through the shop.  Poor reindeer.  There seem to be more and more of these reindeer experiences about at Christmas, but I'm not sure it is a very nice experience for the reindeer, being kept in a sort of shed in a garden centre and gawped at by an endless stream of unfamiliar people.