Gunga Din

It rained the whole time in Ireland, but we had fun despite it. We went to the boat my dad keeps with his friend on Lough Derg. We went to Bunratty castle and folk park, we played a D&D game with the kids, and we invented our own board game and played that. I taught Steph to crochet granny squares and we started work on an afghan for dad. Dad read us poems by Robert Service, Rudyard Kipling and Banjo Patterson whilst we crocheted. I practiced a new bluegrass fingerpick I was learning on the guitar until I drove everyone crazy (but they all agreed I had improved by the end of the week).

The kids played in the Irish farmland surrounding dad's house come rain or shine. They shoveled up gravel from a heap and scattered it all across the yard; on the last day Steph and I spent an hour sweeping it back into a heap. The kids furnished a "den" in the hedgerow by the lane and spent a lot of time carrying stuff up there.

We watched a clutch of swallow chicks in dad's barn get bigger and bigger - before long they'll be ready to fly. We identified most of the wild flowers we found on dad's land (ragwort, greater plantain, ribbed plantain, welted thistle, creeping thistle, creeping buttercup, herb robert, yarrow, short-fruited willowherb, selfheal and others) and we identified all the birds (goldfinches, house sparrows, dunnocks, wrens, robins, chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, greenfinches, jackdaws, hooded crows, wagtails, swallows, and others).

Tomorrow we're off on our travels again - to London this time with Ed (he didn't come to Ireland) for our main family holiday of the year. I'll resume normal regular blogging when I return.

Make A Little Birdhouse In Your Soul

I've been watching a bluetit carrying nesting materials to the birdhouse in our back garden. Hopefully he'll attract a mate and raise a clutch of chicks like last year. Here are some images I found when searching for "recycled bird house". Each image is a link to the page it comes from. Some of them have instructions how to make the item, some are ready-made items for sale, and some are out-of-date and no longer for sale, but I thought they could be inspiration for your own recycled bird house projects.

If you make a recycled bird house, please email me a photo, and say whether you're happy for your image to be used on the blog.

February Bird List

Birds I have seen from my house in February 2008:

• Blue tits (some are inspecting the nesting box on the wall of the house)


• Great tits


• Crows


• Woodpigeons


• Robins


• Sparrows


• Dunnocks


• Wrens


• Blackbirds


• Magpies


• Jays


• Starlings


• Canada geese (NEW - didn't see these in January)


• Pheasant (NEW - didn't see these in January either)

That's 14 species. Birds I saw in January that I didn't see again in February include long-tailed tits, woodpecker, gulls, herons, nuthatch, chaffinch. But didn't spend as much time birdwatching this month. So they were probably there, I just wasn't looking out of the window at the right time.

It was only a few years ago I decided I wanted to be able to identify all the birds that frequent my garden. I'm not a dedicated "twitcher". I have no interest in going to some desolate spot and sitting in a little camouflage tent in the driving rain in the hope of spotting some rare bird.

But I was delighted at how quickly I learned to identify my local garden birds. It was quite strange; I would have told you that I didn't get many birds in my garden, and most of them were all the same - a mass of small similar brown birds. But when I started watching I realised there were quite a few birds I could already identify - robins, blackbirds, magpies etc. And the "little brown jobs" eventually separated themselves out into sparrows (male and female quite distinct), chaffinches (again males and females are different), dunnocks, wrens and a few other things. Blue tits and great tits stymied me at first but now they look totally different, I don't understand why I found it so hard to tell them apart. Woodpigeons and collared doves also confused me for a while. And I don't know why it took me so long to decide whether the big black things I could see were crows, rooks or jackdaws - they're quite different from each other when you know what to look for. But I still can't tell gulls apart at all. And there's a little grey-and-white fellow I see sometimes who is either a marsh tit or a willow tit, but in every book I've read they look completely identical to me so I've no idea how to decide which one he is.

If you can't already identify your neighbourhood birds, I recommend you get a good bird book and start keeping a monthly list. It's not hard. It seems hard at first but once you've identified a regular visitor you never have to do it again. It's free. It's not time-consuming. I do it whilst I'm doing other things, the washing up, for example. And it's a lovely skill to have.

There's a Rat on Mi Bird Table, What Am I Gonna Do?

Dad (Bill in Ballaugh) has been enjoying feeding the birds and watching them from his kitchen window. But he phoned me up for advice when he saw a rat helping itself to the bird food.

The chances are he's always had rats in his garden. He just hasn't spotted one before. He lives on a hillside in rural Ireland, surrounded by small dairy farms. The landscape will be full of rats, and it's OK. It's probably also full of field mice, foxes, squirrels, bats, rabbits, hares and all sorts of lovely things. If he saw any of those in his garden he'd be delighted, but he's not so keen on the rat. I don't blame him - if I saw a rat I'd wonder if it might come in the house, where it definitely would not be welcome. I wouldn't welcome squirrels or bats etc. in the house either. But still, I don't think spotting a rat in your garden is cause to panic.

There's no need to stop feeding the birds. But there are steps he can take to try to make sure the birds get the food and the rat does not:

• Feed on the bird table, not on the floor.


• Rat-proof the bird table - an inverted cone of metal or chickenwire, or one of those big round tins you get chocolates in at Christmas, inverted and attached round the post, might stop rats climbing up.


• Only feed enough for one day. Feed in the morning, and clear up any leftover food at night. Birds don't come to the birdtable at night so this doesn't deprive them of anything. But it deprives the rat of a midnight snack. I know dad saw his rat in the daytime, but it could have been visiting the table at night for weeks before he saw it.


• I wonder if those squirrel-proof bird feeders also keep rats out? I've seen a spinning bird-feeder - the weight of a squirrel or a rat causes it to spin faster and faster, flinging the unwanted mammal right off. The video is hysterical. I think if I had one I'd be praying for squirrels and rats to vsit it, just for the laugh.

January Bird List

Birds I have seen from my house in January 2008:

• Great tits
• Starlings
• Blue tits
• House sparrows
• Robins
• Crows
• Magpies
• Blackbirds
• Jays
• Dunnocks
• Wrens
• Woodpigeons
• Treeful of long-tailed tits (about 8 or so tits in an oak tree)
• Great spotted woodpecker (only saw him once)
• Gulls (dunno what sort, I don't do gulls)
• Herons
• Nuthatch (just saw him once, but he hung around for ages so I got a good look at him)
• Chaffinch (male, I only saw one)

That's 18 species, which isn't bad for the middle of winter. I'll start a new list in February, and note which species I see again, which I don't see again, and any new species I spot.