Garden Bird Watching - Starting From Scratch

When we moved to our new home in the summer of last year, I had great hopes of being able to attract a wide variety of birds to our new large garden having had only a small back yard in the years before. Things haven't really worked out as planned so far, we've done so much work on the garden over the last year, it has for the most part been looking like a building site.

The work on the garden is far from complete, we've still to build a patio at the top of the garden where the greenhouse once stood and we need to relocate some rose bushes that we've got growing in the lawn so that mowing isn't so much of an obstacle course.

We do have a bird table in the garden, next to the fence, but it doesn't attract very much, except when I put one of those fruity fat blocks out which the Starlings see off in about a day! On the other side of the fence, our neighbour has a variety of bird feeders hung in trees which always attract a variety of common garden birds including large numbers of goldfinch. I'm not jealous, honestly I'm not, but I do want to get into garden bird photography and pointing the lens over next doors fence may not go down too well!

What I'd like to do this autumn and winter is to establish some new bird feeders in our garden and possibly hang some nest boxes in time for spring. I'm basically starting with a clean sheet as the existing table is where it was when we bought the house and with the array of feeders next door, I do think it needs to be re-located or replaced with something more suitable.

My copy of Birds magazine from the RSPB came yesterday and flicking through the pages of the accompanying mail order booklet and various bird related web sites, the array of feeder systems now on the market is mind boggling!

Paul.

Firefox 2.0 RC3

Well, did defect IE7 for a very short while before I noticed that the new Blogger Beta editing icons don't show on your blog when you are signed in. I seem to have got round the issues with Firefox 2 now as well, having got the update for the Noia Extreme theme, I've started using that instead of the standard Firefox one and the right clicking problem seems to have gone away. It's strange that no-one else seems to have experienced the same problems as me, I do seem to have that effect on anything electrical!

I've downloaded Firefox 2.0 RC3 this morning and so far, the freezing problem seems to have gone away which is great news for this Firefox fan.

Paul.

All Eyes On Cairngorm

My secret sources (so secret, they're all in the sidebar) were suggesting last week that this week would be much cooler but as is usually the case, everything changed and the unusual mild conditions are set to continue for few more days.

Some long range boffins seem to be going for a colder than average winter this year. Given that our local forecaster couldn't get it right for the same day during the summer, I'll take that with a pinch of salt but with snowfall on the increasing year on year recently (still nothing like it used to be), maybe this will be the year we're snowed in for a week!

The number of locations in Europe recording snowfall is now on the increase and today snow has been mentioned in the forecast for the tops of the Scottish mountains this week. It's time to start checking out the web cameras at Cairngorm Mountain, when I see snow falling there, I'll know winter as arrived.

Paul.

Firefox 2

I've just installed Firefox 2 and I wish I hadn't bothered. While I'm a great fan of Firefox and grant that this isn't the final release, it seems to be much more unstable than the beta releases for version 1.0 or 1.5.

The menu often fails to appear when right clicking on links and it really seems to struggle with multiple tabs or windows, often grinding to a halt and freezing. I do hope they get the issues sorted out for the final release because the release of IE7 is imminent and on this performance, looks like winning back some ground.

Paul.

Snowstorm, Buffalo, USA

I've just been reading over at Chis & Fips about a freak snowstorm that's hit Buffalo in the USA. Looks quite severe, even for America. News reports can be found at CTV.

Paul

Armed & Dangerous

Back in the summer, I went out and bought an SLR camera, a Nikon D50, thinking that I could be the next David Bailey.

Having used the camera for a couple of months now, I'm thinking that unless David Bailey often stood at the lakeside behind his tripod, fiddling with the knobs and buttons and eventually screaming 'bugger it!' before setting the contraption to landscape mode, I don't think I'll be the next big thing in photography.

Having said that, even using the presets, the quality of the photos I've taken so far have been a cut above the ones taken with the old camera so I'll settle for that and leave the knob twiddling to the professionals.

Hopefully this coming winter season will bring plenty of opportunities for shots of gratuitous snowy landscapes, more on that thought later...

Paul.

Yorkshire Snowman Is Back!

It's been a while, but if there's any time to crank this thing back into action, it's just before winter.

You'll notice I've got a new template with all the new Blogger Beta extra bits and I've also updated the list of blogs that link to me which seems to have shrunk faster than the Tony Blair appreciation society.

Got to run now, always busy I am. If you want to know what I've been up to all this time, take a butchers at our main blog, Snowbabies.

Paul.