Great Garden Bird Watch

This weekend is the time for this year's RSPB's Great Garden Bird Watch. Literally millions of households up and down the country will be glued to their gardens for an hour's recording. The safari will be no exception, after the traditional Sunday morning bacon butty it will be pencil and notebook in hand. The garden has already been 'seeded' with sunflower seeds, a fat-ball hangs in the tree and in the morning half a loaf of stale bread will be thrown on the garage roof. The event depicted in the picture in the previous post will no doubt be repeated, but other than gulls and Magpies, will there be anything else...birdlife in the garden has been a bit sparse recently...oh to have the House Sparrow flock from my previous house!

I really miss those little guys. This is only about a quater of the full flock - wonder if they are still there and doing OK?

I came across this old photo whilst searching for the sparrow pic above. It shows Yours Truly in a spot of bother at a 4x4 driver training day my boss and I attended some time ago. Where is he, he ain't in the car! Despite being told to sit very still and not to shift about he opened the door and fled up the hill. (I think the guy in the background is watching him zoom past). Aficionados of off road driving will notice I have the wheels pointing up the hill - - never but never do this on a tricky side slope or you will very likely roll the vehicle over...I should have the lock on the downhill side and allowed the car to slither gently into the muddy hole.

Trouble was no one seemed to know how deep it was; eventually two more of the chap with the very clean boots friends appeared to counter balance the vehicle whilst I was winched out backwards. Next rule...get some decent tyres, these were only 80% on road/20% off and it really showed, with decent mud terrains the initial slide to port wouldn't have happened and there wouldn't have been a predicament.

So there you go... a bit of seat of the pants fun.

Where to next? The back garden beckons after the bacon butties...update on what was spotted tomorrow.

In the meantime what have you recorded in your garden and tell us about your hair raisng predicaments.