May goeth on

Eighteenth of May

Back garden rose
You'll probably get a lot of these 'cause I like roses

Still on the nest
You'll probably get a lot of these 'cause I like grebes




Guess the flower
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'tis

a
raspberry

flower






Not a dandelion but common hawkweed





This is the largest coot brood I've seen





Proud mama

Dad was between the kids and the footpath keeping folk at bay




Ribwort plantain

Swanlet

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Tuesday the Nineteenth of May

Two tits on the feeder




Stroppy looking tit




Mummy with twelve (TWELVE!) chicks

On the nest
There's no way that I know of telling the gender of a great crested grebe: they take turns sitting on the eggs





All the family

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Wednesday the Twentieth of May

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;
(I did say that I like roses)

The pond

Extreme zoom to show that there's four eggs in the grebe's nest

Four's a lot for a grebe, at least as far as I know on the pond

Swan, swanlets and grebe

you can see the zoomage and croppage in the previous pic

The swan took a discrete path around the grebe's nest

Blue tit looking startled

There are at least three different families of tits being fed from here.

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Thursday the Twenty First of May

More rose!

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Friday the Twenty Second of May

Small mallard family




Still there




Dog rose




Mum on guard

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Thursday's not so bad (I)

The back's better: a good night's kip was all it needed.

The pond: The bottom grebes have deserted their nest. Why, I don't know. The eggs might have hatched and the chicks moved but there's no sign of the female, eggs or chicks.

Rather poor pic of what's left of the nest.

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Families of mallards and coots were sharing a patch of lake:

All friends?

Together

They did fall out later though

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The top grebe was patrolling its nest site:

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Narrowboat "Sunny" was passing through Morse lock: see next blog.

Don't you just hate Wednesday?

Well, bad day. Woke up at 7:30 - the back's gone!

I've got a strange back, 99% of the time it's OK and then out of the blue it goes. A constant ache which turns into a sharp, incapacitating jag at apparently random times. One thing that brings on the "jag" is miss-stepping ; for instance not noticing a kerbstone and the foot hitting unexpectedly. I can bend down but straightening up again's another story: jag, jag, jag. Sitting requires a dead straight back and when walking I have to be ramrod straight and watch where I'm putting my feet. Don't even think about running!

'nuff about my troubles:

I eventually went round the pond. Not much happening but the Heron was there.

Coot chicks lose their red heads pretty quickly

But Moorhen chicks are black headed from the egg

Dog rose

'shopped

Heron

Cropped & 'shopped

Ruby Tuesday

Been shopping (cat food, of course)
Life:

• Why, when I know what I want and where it is, do people get in the way by dawdling along window shopping or shelf examining?
• Why, when I want to stand and look at goods in windows or on shelves, do people push past in a hurry to get to somewhere far beyond my ken?

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Seems that we're down to two pairs of grebes on the pond. 

The pair that built the stupid nest  have apparently gone.

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A narrowboat, Sapphire, came through Morse lock.

Apparently they'd been moored at Shireoaks marina for a week after doing the head. Didn't like the weed or the lack of mooring places(?). From Brum, moving on to York.

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Isn't it strange how coot chicks have red heads?