Quick post

Just back from two weeks in France, still trying to catch up with everything.
The first half of the holiday we stayed in Brittany, borrowing a house from friends (that's where we were for a funeral last summer, and it was Pierre's house we stayed in, as his daughters still have it). Second half we camped in two different sites. This little video was from the third area we visited - the Marais Poitevin., a large marshy area also known as La Venise Verte or Green Venice. According to Wikipedia it covers about 970 square km , and according to our guide there are about 6000km of man-made drainage canals, as well as some natural ones. This work was started during the reign of Henri IV (1553 - 1610), who called in the Dutch experts, (just as the English did  with the Norfolk fens in the early 17th century).

After our trip along the canals we visited a bird park - mostly waterfowl, and a great way of using the natural landscape. These storks were some of the birds we saw, and we were lucky enough to be treated to a real sight. When we passed by their enclosure on the return to the car, they were all just standing around quietly. The sound from their beaks was quite amazing - like very fast castanets. After all that display, that pair settled down to a mutual grooming session - I don't know if they were picking some sort of mites out of each other or what.



More will follow as I get organised during the week...

Favourite August cards

Like July, August was a good month for feeling creative, so I have several favourites.

Autumn is here

I was watching the birds the other morning and noticed that the mahonia next door has started to flower - a sure sign that autumn is here.  Our sweetpeas are just coming to an end. I thought mine would be late, as I didn't soak them and germinate them indoors as I normally would, or even start them off the year before. But no - in spite of my shortcomings I have been seeing them all over the place the last month or so.

This is the tail end of my Californian wildflowers. I hope I can identify the one that is somewhat like an osteospermum - they have been very pretty, and have come in yellow, pink and an orangey red.

Hoping to save some seeds from the little miniature California poppy type ones, the heads are just ripening nicely.

Life is busy...

And the birds seem to be much more timid these days, although Mrs Robin and another one still fly to the back step for a snack (not together). I still see the coal, blue and great tits, and the dunnocks. I think I've seen a couple of young robins too, and the starlings are enjoying feasting on the rowan berries.
As C said he saw a sparrowhawk in the front garden last week (it flew into the window, and then sat on the hedge to recover till it was chased off by magpies), that might account for the birds being more cautious. I had a feeling we had some sort of bird of prey around as I saw a dead pigeon with wings torn off on the grass one day.
I wanted to share this video of how quickly the sparrows flock in when they see the feeders filled up - but as you can see, they take flight quickly when they hear the train go by, even though that's a sound they must hear so often during the day. I've been trying to get a better video, but they're not cooperative. I wish that the sound of their wings came out better. I remember hearing a programme about sound recordists some years ago, and they did say it was a hard sound to capture - but can be quite easily simulated with flapping leather gloves if I remember correctly.

Birr

We took a trip to Birr on Saturday. With C being with me I took very few photos compared to if I were on my own, but it was nice to have him with me for a change. He'd been promising me for a long time that he had to go on business and I'd get a trip in that way, but it hadn't happened yet this year. As there was a car he wanted to look at in the town, we combined the two on Saturday - along with another two cars on the way back - it was a long day!
The gardens were lovely, as always, but you could see that the hard winter had taken its toll. Compared to this time last year there wasn't nearly as much growth ( the border of agapanthus, where I got so many butterfly photos last year, was very sparse, and though the colchicum were out, they weren't in the same drifts that you could see from the far side of the river. There also seemed to be several trees down - I imagine more to do with the weight of snow than wind, as the fallen trunk C walked across looked quite sound, so he said.

I would have thought these were irises if I hadn't seen the odd flower heads!

River Birds

There seem to be a lot more gulls nowadays, and especially more black-headed ones - even though they're not so black-headed at this time of the year.

There's been an afternoon programme  on Radio 4 this week in the 15-minute slot at quarter to four which has been covering farmland birds. Today was a lot about sparrows (and I have a video of those, just got to upload it), but one this week covered black-headed gulls, and mentioned Kehar in Watership Down, and how that was the sound they made. It's true - I specially listened out this morning and heard it.

Wednesday morning, or was it Tuesday, was the first time I'd seen two cormorants together. Given that one is in the foreground and still looks smaller I wonder if it's a juvenile.

Park time

I had to go out shopping yesterday morning; the weather was a bit mixed but I stuck my camera(s) and some old bread in the car just in case, and it was well worth going for a quick walk in the park. It wasn't enough to wake me up sufficiently, apparently. I managed to delete, beyond retrieval, the photos on the Olympus, including some good tufted duck ones, and the female mandarin. Luckily I had used both cameras and still had a few photos left at the end...

Tufted Duck

A red-eared terrapin - presumably a released pet

I nearly missed noticing the terrapin, because it was unusual to have such a good view of the tufted duck staying still in one place, but I caught sight of it in the corner of the camera viewfinder. A moment later and it was gone.

My echinacea is long over, and I never got a photo of it. Mind you, it was nothing like as spectacular as this in Farmleigh!

Mrs Robin's plumage has grown back in - she now looks fresh and pretty, and is much less timid again also.

Sunshine and showers

Today was a day of sunshine and some showers so heavy that it sounded like hail on the windows...

Starlings

The rowan berries are magnificent this year

Hope this little dunnock was just cold and not sick

Early in the Morning

It's become almost impossible to get leaf Earl Grey tea anywhere but in town.
And we were down to the last scrapings in the tea caddy - you'd think we were back in the old days when it was so valuable it was kept under lock and key. (On Radio 4 next week they're serialising Pepys' diaries, and one of the trails has him writing that he'd just had his first taste of a new drink called tea, but he couldn't see it becoming popular).
So on Thursday morning I got an early bus all the way into town. Thanks to the light traffic (holidays, no schools) it flew into town in no time, and as it had stopped raining by then I went in to Stephen's Green to fill in some time.
It's the first time I've ever seen a heron there. In the end I wished I had even more time, but I had to get to Bewleys to get my tea and then walk back across the city to work...

Speckled Egg and more

I haven't seen a speckled egg like this one in ever so long - I was about to crack it to make the batter for dinner, but then I thought I'd take a photo!

Mrs Robin's tail is growing in nicely. She's still moulting, though - as she was sitting on the wall early I could see a little breast feather blow off and drift away in the wind.

This bud is the yellow flower that looks a bit like a daisy. I still haven't looked through my flower books to try to identify it - it's got quite a fleshy stem. There's beautiful colour in the nigella seed-heads, too.

I can't think how long it is since I last baked this - ten years or more. I'd totally forgotten about it till I came across it again recently looking through the cookery book (Ronald Johnson's  The American Table). Last week I thought I'd asked the butcher for one piece of striploin that would do a stir-fry, but I discovered that he must have mis-heard: when I got home there was a large piece of sirloin, enough for the stir-fry and then a good bit left over. Just the right amount for this:

Colonial Beef Steak Pudding  (serves 4)

2 tblsp vegetable oil
1 lb boneless beef, cut into small bite-sized pieces
1 chopped onion
1 tblsp flour
1 cup beef stock,
2 tblsp tomato purée, 1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
Salt and pepper - I add thyme

2/3 cup sliced mushroooms - we're not mushroom fans, I use carrots
2 tbslp oil or beef dripping
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
2 eggs

Heat 2 tbslp oil quite hot, and brown the steak in batches. Add the second batch back to the pan, add the onion and cook for a few minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for another few minutes. Add the stock, tomato purée and Worcestershire Sauce, carrots and seasoning to taste. Bring to the boil, reduce hit and simmer over a very low heat uncovered for about 1 1/2 hours, till the meat is tender. If it dries out too much add a little more water, but the aim is that at the end of the cooking time there should be very little liquid left.
Heat the oven to 450F, 230C, Gas Mark 8.
Heat the oil or dripping in a 1 1/2 quart casserole, with at least 2"  sides.
When the oil is really hot, pour in the batter and then drop spoonfuls of the steak mixture over the top. Bake for 15-20 minutes till the pudding is puffed and brown.
My recollection is that I used to do this in a soufflé type dish, so that's what I used tonight, but I think it would have been better in a wider, shallower dish. Certainly when we used to have toad--in-the-hole my mother used a roasting tin, partially cooking the sausages and then pouring the batter over. We used to have it with sugar - that seems strange to me know. But Yorkshire pudding is good to me almost any way it comes, and essentially that's what this is, except that I use milk and water mixed for Yorkshire puddings.