Berries and lichen

Blackcap

Well - if this had been a male the cap would have been black. The female is more of a chestnut colour.
It's about the first time in three years I've seen one in the garden, and along with the redpoll it's another bird that C had never seen before.



They're meant to have such a melodious song that they have been nicknamed "the northern nightingale" but I'm afraid that with the door shut all I managed to capture sound-wise was C!

Seen around town

Haven't had time yet to upload any photos from our walk in the park last Monday, but at least there are so few of these snaps from around town that it didn't take any time to copy and edit them.
We have, to go with the rowing Santa from Christmas Eve, a biker Santa. Well, not what C would call a real biker, but he certainly caught my attention on the way to work the other morning.

As did a welcome ray of sunshine lighting up this building. It's been so, so grey these last couple of weeks.

On Thursday afternoon there was some respite from the gale-force winds, and the sky brightened up too around lunchtime, so I walked into town after work to get some wool for a couple of projects. This is the Christmas "tree" on O'Connell Street.

This scarf was a last-minute idea for a Christmas gift for my aunt. Had to phone the wool shop to make sure that they'd have two balls of any of the nice colourways in stock, so as not to waste a journey in to town if they didn't.

Happy Bird Day

Well, today was the first day that the weather was good enough to tempt us out for a walk in the park.
It also seemed to bring a veritable menagerie, as C said, to our feeders. And we definitely have a pair of robins now. As well as the dimwit one who flies away when I put worms and suet pellets on the wall for it, we have one flying to the back door. So I wonder is  the tamer one perhaps one of the young ones or even the adult female from last year, which Mr. Dimwit is now letting into his territory as a prospective mate.

We've been having a pair of blackbirds moseying around the patio recently - here they both are in next-door's mahonia tree.

 

A sparrow in the mahonia

 Goldfinches

 Redpoll

 

 Great tit

Coal Tit

Blue tit

And of course a robin. We were hard pressed to find a good picture from last January to print a calendar page for our notice-board (in fact we cheated and took one from last February instead), so I've decided to leave my robin as the blog header for this month.

Sunny it may have been, but it was also very windy which wasn't ideal for taking pictures of birds perching in the tree.

And here's a photo of the Moravian Sugar Cake which we had for breakfast on Christmas Day:

New Year, old photos

Wishing everybody a happy, healthy and peaceful year for 2012.
One of my holiday projects has been scanning some old slides for my dad and transferring them to CD. It's amazing how many things are familiar - there are blankets and counterpanes I remember, and there's even a skirt my mother is wearing in one of them that I remember wearing myself at one stage! Those old tweeds certainly lasted and lasted...

We've had a lovely restful week. A large pot of ratatouille provided several meals, and the leftover beef from Christmas Day was enough to make a bobotie and a shepherd's pie to eat plus one of each for the freezer. But the weather has been awful - wet, grey, cold, windy...C has gone to (hopefully) help his friend fix the last major issue on the car, but it started raining a while back and I hope they're not getting too wet!
I'm amazed at how new and fresh the wood looks in the photo with the trailer! I remember it well as we used to love riding in it to the dump to see what we could find to bring home with us, and on summer holidays the crates with the dogs were always packed onto it as well as all our bits and pieces. But I never remember it looking as fresh and pristine as it does in that photo - I guess it was very soon after Dad had made it!

Happy Christmas

I was feeling lazy on Saturday  and didn't make my usual cinnamon buns for Christmas breakfast.
Instead I made this Moravian Sugar Cake - it's been a while since we've had it.

Moravian Sugar Cake: 2 large or 3 medium sugar cakes


2 medium potatoes
1/3 cup lard
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup warm water
1 1/2 tblsp dry yeast (I used between 1/2 and 1/2 an ounce fresh)
1/2 tsp sugar or honey
approx 6 1/2 cups flour

For topping: butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, cream.
Cook the potatoes till soft, reserve 1 cup of the water and mash the potatoes.
In a small pan heat the reserved potato water with the butter and lard till they are melted. Add the honey, salt, and mashed potatoes and mix well. Cool to lukewarm.
While cooling, activate the yeast in the 1/4 cup warm water with sugar or honey. You can do this in a large mixing bowl ready for the next step.
Add the eggs and potato mix to the yeast. Add 2 1/2 cups of flour and beat for about two minutes with an electric mixer.
Gradually add more flour as needed till you have a soft elastic dough.
Turn into a buttered bowl, cover and leave to rise.
Knock the dough down, turn onto a floured board and knead lightly. Cover and leave to rise for about 10 minutes.
Butter shallow baking pans.
Pat or roll the dough out to fit - it should not be more than 1/2" thick. Brush the top with melted butter.
Cover and leave to rise till almost doubled in size.
With your thumb, punch little indentations over the surface of the dough and fill with dots of butter.
Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon and liberally with brown sugar, and then dribble heavy cream over it.
Bake in a preheated oven 400F / 200C for about 15-20 minutes till golden brown.
Serve warm.
To freeze, wrap tightly in foil. When ready to use, heat in  a moderate oven still wrapped in the foil.

This comes from The Bread Book: A Baker's Almanac  by Ellen Foscue Johnson.

Alternative transport for Santa!

C had a half day today, so I walked into town after work and we met for lunch in a little Indian deli which came recommended by a work colleague who is half-Indian and knows what he's talking about. Certainly the food was lovely, and there are more things we'd like to go back and try some time. I will say, though, that C's "Indian Fanta" as opposed to Irish Fanta was a rather lurid orange, although he reckoned it tasted much better.

 Anyway, on the way to meet him I stopped to watch a cormorant flying up the river, and then spotted Santa and an elf in what looks quite like a currach. It's obvious that they're not used to rowing, though,  and they certainly weren't going at any pace. We're used to seeing far more expert rowers racing along further up-river where all the rowing clubs are.

New garden visitor

I was so excited this afternoon to spot a new bird on the nyger seed feeder. I've been clearing a lot of chaff of it, and was hoping that meant that goldfinches were coming regularly even if I hadn't got to see them. Then I spotted some chaffinches also enjoying it. But this afternoon I saw a redpoll - a first for me. Not great photos, because it was a very grey and overcast day and I had to take the photos through the window in case I frightened him away. But now I know I may see him again, I'll be ready with the right lens on the camera and the tripod handy to the back door.

I actually managed to accidentally delete the best photo - I thought I had it locked, but instead it disappeared into thin air. Last time I downloaded data recovery software it came complete with something that my AV flagged up, so I was slightly reluctant to try again. But I can happily endorse this programme:  Pandora Recovery.  I'm glad it occurred to me to go and look on CNET rather than a random Google search, as they normally scan the downloads they offer to ensure they're virus-free.

I got my little redpoll back. According to my book they're about the same size as goldfinches, but he looked smaller to me. Pretty sure it's a male, as the females have a less prominent red patch compared to the male.

Sunset in the Park

We had a fruitless walk through the park this afternoon in the vain hope that we might spot the pannier that C lost off his motorbike last week. He hasn't walked that far since he had to walk home from work in the snow this time last year, and is still suffering. I walked about the same distance on Friday on the same errand but a less scenic walk.
At least we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset as we trekked back to the car cross country...
At the start of the walk I spotted more unusual fungi.

As we started the cross-country bit of our walk back, we spotted lights in some trees. As we got closer we could also see white roses and lots of little tealights in glass jars. As we were taking a closer look, two guys arrived to disassemble it all. Apparently they had been setting the scene for a friend to propose (successfully) to his girlfriend, and now that the coast was clear they'd come to take it all down again. They'd even highlighted the couples initials carved in the tree a year or so previously with a heart-shaped garland of lights. Then they were looking forward to the cigars and beer that they'd been promised in return for their help.

Round and about

This morning I saw a blackbird on the ground picking at a fallen rowan berry. I wished I'd had time to stop and take the camera out - even in the miserable grey windy weather the contrast between the berry and the bright yellow beak was wonderful. But the train service here isn't frequent enough that I could afford to miss the train...
However, I did snap these last week - on another wet, though not so wild, day. The rose is in a garden just up the road. I'd seen the fungi a week previously when they were fresher, and they looked like lovely glossy wood, almost. But it was a day when I'd decided that a camera on top of six library books was just more than I wanted to carry, and by the time I passed that way again they had faded a little from their original beauty.

This is another one I saw on the way to the bus stop one morning  - it almost looked as if it were melting into the ground. I don't remember seeing such a wide variety of fungi in the local area as I have this year.

Did I say that last time we went to the park we saw more deer gathered together in one spot than I think I've ever seen there before?

And they weren't all at a distance either - a small part of the herd was quite close to us.