Be Excellent To Each Other

I wasn't walking but I saw a squirrel in my garden. Isn't he lovely... for vermin.

Cracking photo

Awww I quite like squirrels. When I was younger we had a squirrel in our garden that didn't mind coming close to us, on one or two occasions it even took nuts out of my hand.

Angry graffiti, Dartmoor


(spoilered due to one word)

An abandoned Jason Vorhees mask in the woods

Dartmoor in the Autumn sunshine

That looks like something from a fairytale book, Malc.

Been a gorgeous couple of days to be out in the sunshine. We went up to the lakes on Friday night for a weekend in Great Langdale. Love it so much up there at this time of the year.

Two lovely photos!

Beautiful views there, Mr G!

I love the sunlight in the second.

Langdale is one of my favourite valleys. Great landscape, great camp, great pub within walking distance - pure bliss.

Two great pubs within an easy walk! Yesterday we had lunch and a pint at the Sticklebarn and then pudding and another pint at the Old Dungeon Ghyll.

It certainly feels like there might be a fairy or two hiding behind some of the trees when you are up there Mimi!

Was it abandoned though?

I certainly didn't hang around to find out!

One of the things I find charming and also puzzling is the footpaths in Australia. Many residential roads don't have footpaths, just a 'nature strip' of grass.

Every so often, there may be a short stretch of footpath that seems to be pointless as it just starts and stops suddenly.

My new favourite is these 'steps to nowhere'. There's no point whatsover to these being here, as there is nothing at the top, and behind those hedges is just solid fence and then some gardens. It's note even like there's a front door into a house nearby that they could have been pointing towards. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Steaming!

Wahay! Brilliant!

Yep, got a heads up that it was coming through Bromsgrove so wandered over for a look. It was properly going for it.

I'm staying just behind the dunes in The Netherlands, near to Noordwijkhout. Between me and the sandy dunes is a great area of trails and forest, which is full of deer. If they have enough space to escape easily, some of them even hold still for a photo:

Not sure how well this turned out. Max zoom on my 4 year old phone

I think you can see them slightly better in the video I took:

https://youtu.be/rntgzHbRa2Q

Despite the subtitle we did see these in a city (ok, town), but we were out on a lunchtime walk when we spotted these guys hanging out in a tree.

Tall husband managed to get a decent picture up close.

Looks like Why-Bird from Playbus

It’s a kookaburra. What kind of bird was Why-bird? Maybe a woodpecker? I think a kookaburra is a type of kingfisher, isn’t it?

*whispers* Why-bird was just a puppet.

But yeah, it looks like a Kooka (I think they are related to Kingfishers) AND also looks like Whybird.

I think Why-bird probably had elements from lots of cool birds. A Franken-bird perhaps.

The tree also looks like a gnarly withered hand with long horror-film fingers

This was on the grass verge round the corner.

I can't tell if it's, um, before or after, and I didn't feel like moving the packet to see if it had some in or if it was empty. So I guess someone either had a great time, or was disappointed when they realised they'd lost it.

I met some nice ponies on my walk:

I was walking* and saw these lovelies.


^{*in my garden, but technically still walking, and I live in a town instead of a city, so it still counts...}

Whoa, makes a change from starlings.

I love starlings. There are so many tiny flashes of colour. They looks like an entire galaxy. The parakeets are here every day; snow, rain, sun…

They know where the good snackums are

One of “my” starlings has worked out that I’m responsible for the mealworms on the feeder, so if it’s empty he sits there looking into my office and shouts at me to sort this out!

Haha! That’s so amazing. I love bird personalities so much. The magpies, jackdaws and parakeets are the local comedians.

We have a visiting heron as well, but lately it must have been getting too close to a territorial crow, as a few times a day the heron comes flying over making a noise you never knew herons made, with a crow flying about a meter behind it, absolutely making a racket.

Herons fly in slow motion, I don't understand how they do it

They can also fly pretty fast when they are being chased by a crow.

Little birbs!