What happened there?

The Safari went to bed well pleased with the footy last night, we've got a Jones in our very near ancestry so we're deffo Welsh! Dod ar chi Cymru

The sunset wasn't bad either.

A bit of red(ish) sky at night had our hopes up for a better day than was forecast today. But in the wee small hours of the night we could hear the wind howling and rain lashing. This morning the promise of a better day wasn't borne out, it was dull and still very windy when we got up. It felt like we woken up in March or October than on the second of July.

After a while the early showers dissipated and out came some sunny spells. Enough to encourage us to hang the laundry out and seeing how that looked like it was going to dry that was enough to encourage us to get the camera out.

Unfortunately by now the sun had moved round and the shrubbery was shading the feeders. Worth a punt though and you never know, that ringed Greenfinch might put in an appearance and sit in a position with the ring showing the missing numbers  - wishful thinking!

We sat there a few minutes with only a brief visit from a Blue Tit before we had to run inside due to the cold! Crikey the temperature didn't half drop when a big black cloud obscured the sun for more than five minutes...brrrrr.

Once the sun reappeared and promised to stay out we went back out again. This time the sunny spells outlasted the cloudy ones and it was almost warm sheltered from the strong wind. The Blue Tit came back and on several occasions took a sunny seed and chose to eat it in the open. Usually they fly off into the dense cover of the Crab Apple tree to eat.

Blackbirds are regular visitors, taking advantage of whatever food is on offer, except the sunny seeds, and are often seen making a splash in the waterfall preferring it to the bird bath - is it the running water they prefer? This juvenile spent most of the day dangling off the suet block.

Any hint of a cloud made conditions at the bottom of the garden pretty gloomy - we're beginning to think our garden is the 'wrong way round'. We're the right hand side of the semi and the garden faces west...next move will be either the left hand side and make sure the neighbours don't have tall shrubs or trees or we get a north facing garden so the sun is behind us more of the day...Not that we'll be moving any time soon we hope.

The only Greenfinch we saw was one of the wrong ones, a juvenile...is the ringed male still around or has it moved on?

Chinks of light through the greenery made one of Stocks plants flowering at the bottom of the garden stand out nicely.

Sadly that was all the garden safari-ing we had time for, Wifey had a toothy disaster last night and an afternoon at the emergency dentist was required. 

Tonight we will be mostly supporting Italy in the footy as Wifey grew up in Taglio di Po south of Venice and one of our brothers is a resident of north east Italy...and we like pasta! Come on you Azzuri!

Where to next? Wifey is excused family duties so we're going to have a safari out somewhere we've not been to for a long long time...should be fun and hopefully there'll be some excellent wildlife to show you. 

In the meantime let us know who woke up in the wrong season in your outback.