Tits & Fat Balls

Track of the day - All Over Bar The Shouting - Prince Edward Island.



I'm anticipating a lot of unwanted traffic from this post, can't imagine why. I was going to title it Great Tits and Fat Balls until I realised that the birds are in fact young long tailed tits.

What happened to global warming? It's bloody freezing here. The middle of July and the temperature this morning was 13.4°C. So far this month 16.4°C has been the highest 8.00am temperature. The sun did appear for a short time yesterday but on Saturday evening my feet were so cold I had to switch the central heating on.

Mrs B has disappeared to the Welsh coast for a week so tonight I may need to look out a hot water bottle.

Dragonfly Emerging

Track of the day - KDF (live taster) - Prince Edward Island.



The bug crawled up out of the pond, the back of its shell broke open and a dragonfly started to emerge. Its wings were scrunched up like the centre of a lettuce but then they started to unfurl.
Grotesque but fascinating.
The last time we counted there were five of them at it. You can see a larger version of the picture here.

After a day or two hanging around and drying out they end up looking like this one. I think it's a Common Hawker but I'm probably wrong.

Common Hawker

Track of the day - Partlife - Prince Edward Island.



The rebuilt computer is now up and flying. The problem was the monitor. It wasn't getting a signal because it was defaulting to VGA rather than Dvi or something. And there was I thinking I'd screwed up the motherboard or stuck the processor in upside down.
As if!
Minor crisis over, I wandered off to the garden pond to see if any of the young hedgehogs had fallen in and drowned.
They hadn't but I found myself watching a dragonfly drying out after it had climbed out of its moulting skin.
Google suggests it's a Common Hawker dragonfly. Seemed pretty uncommon to me but there you are, just shows how little I know about anything.
What is apparent to me is that if you sit on your ass long enough in an urban garden you get to see plenty of creatures that you would only expect to find out in the countryside.
I think it helps if your garden resembles a mini jungle, so the next time that someone tells you that the garden needs working on, just tell them that you're creating a wildlife sanctuary.
Here's a picture of another 'Common Hawker' I spotted. This one must have metamorphosed yesterday. It wasn't there this evening.
It probably went off to join the hedgehogs.

Hegehogs & Rat Poison

Track of the day - I am a Pig and you are a Cow - Prince Edward Island.



Two weeks ago I was in the garden shed and heard high pitched squeaking. I couldn't see anything but just to be on the safe side I filled a couple of little bags with rat poison and stuffed them under the shed.
High pitched squeaking in our garden tends to indicate that the rats have moved in again.
I didn't hear anything more until last Tuesday when I went out to refill the bird feeders at 7 o'clock in the evening.
I suddenly realised that the squeaks were back, louder than ever and they were coming from somewhere by the back door of the house.
I peered round the corner of the house and discovered an adult hedgehog shepherding five very small hedgehogs.
By the time I'd got hold of my camera, the adult and one of its offspring had disappeared through the hedge into next door's garden. The remaining four were squealing and running round in circles. Whenever one set off the other three tagged along behind it.



Eventually they split up. One ran off across the lawn and disappeared into a clump of irises, two ran off in the opposite direction, under the side gate and out towards the road. One stayed by the shed for a while and then disappeared too.
We haven't seen any of them since.
I'm glad they had enough sense not to eat the rat poison.
Now I'll have to pick up all the slug pellets.

Prince Edward Island Tour Scotland

Track of the day - The Keith Disaster Fund (live) - Prince Edward Island.

Prince Edward Island have avoided Bogsville and embarked on a wee tour of Scotland and the North of England.
Luckily the Glasgow gig was streamed live on the web and I managed to get a passable version of The Keith Disaster Fund. It's yet another great track from a band that should be getting major media coverage. Wake up you guys at the BBC. There's a seriously talented outfit out there.

When I haven't been jumping around humming bits of KDF I've been ripping the vital bits out of my computer and replacing them with more modern bits. Sometimes I've been ripping and humming simultaneously.
Yes building computers is great fun.
New CPU, new motherboard, new memory sticks, new graphics card, new power supply, any fool can build a computer.
I pressed the on button, the fans whirred into life, the speaker beeped once, the monitor screen remained blank for a few seconds then came up with a stunning, silver message on a pure black background, 'no signal'.
The good news is that unlike the rest of the new bits, the fans are amazing.
They should keep us really cool if the weather ever warms up.
Lifetime achievement award ..dit dit dit, Lifetime achievement award ..dit dit dit.