Hello and Welcome Fellow Ramblers: Wild birds and freezing weather!

I hope you all survived Christmas in all of its guises. Once again it’s as far away as ever. The passing of the winter solstice means we are being propelled towards spring and the emergence of the frilly trumpeted daffodil.

Winter solstice (21^st December) is when the sun is farthest south of the equator. Solstice, I understand comes from the Latin, sol meaning ‘sun’ and sistere meaning ‘standing still’.

After weeks of exceedingly (to us Brits!) freezing and hostile weather we are certainly looking forward to those sunny-yellow heralds of spring ‘fluttering and dancing in the breeze’, (William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850). As I blog the daffodil shoots are about an inch high, or two centimetres in ‘new money’.

The Bewick swans (blog - 20th October 2010) were scarily correct in their weather forecasting.

The bird platform (it’s too high up to be a table!), which was erected in the early autumn on the post of the washing line, has been a lifesaver for many birds and a joy to me as I peered through the genuinely frosted glass of the bungalow windows.

Even the cat, who likes to lick a spot in the condensation on the window pane has had difficulty at times, his Velcro-like tongue scraping ineffectually at the thick ferny patterns on the glass. Whatever happened to global warming?

The bird platform has lured blue (tom) tits, great tits, a couple of marsh tits, an occasional flock of about twenty long tailed tits, house sparrows, hedge sparrows (dunnocks), a nuthatch, starlings by the beak load, blackbirds and not forgetting the resident robin. Each partaking of its preferred food.

We also have the delight of at least a couple of wrens which bobble about in the garden hedgerow, taking their tiny lives in their beaks as they nimbly avoid the attentions of the marauding felines. And by contrast magpies, crows and pigeons which spend a lot of the day in the distant oak tree, plus the less often ‘spotted’ woodpecker.

Anyway the snow is decreasing and the temperature is a few degrees warmer, but I doubt very much whether winter has finished with us just yet. I fear we may have more freezing days to come.

From this slowly thawing blogger, I wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous (Cameron and Clegg willing) New Year! Speak soon!

The Bumpkin Rambler xx 

  

Hello and Welcome Fellow Ramblers: UFO sighting over Shropshire 2008

The time was 1-ish on the morning of the 4^th July 2008. The hours of relative darkness were crawling by. It’s strange how when you’re asleep the time appears to go quickly, and yet when sleep is proving illusive the minutes seem like hours.

It was a clear and tranquil night through the undrawn curtains. And then I saw it! A bright flashing light hung motionless in the darkness away to the south. It seemed about 4 miles away and low in the sky. After deciding that it definitely wasn’t a star, I reached for my specs and sat up in bed. Now I had a better view, but not good enough.

I felt strangely drawn to the window. I tiptoed out of bed so as not to disturb the rest of the household and stood peering out towards the Shropshire hills. The light retained its stillness. It alternated between red and white, pulsating at a slow and definite pace. Red, white, red, white...

I can’t be sure how long I stood transfixed to the spot, but eventually the UFO, for that’s what it certainly was (however UFO is defined), began moving slowly into the distance, maintaining the same monotonous flashing. I watched with a sense of awe as it slowly disappeared.

We get lots of aircraft locally, anything from helicopters to micro-lites, hot air balloons to air liners (which are usually so high up that they are a but a speck to the human eye), but all these earthly inventions make one thing in common that my UFO certainly didn’t make and that was noise! As it hovered in the still night air and flew off into the distance it was as silent as the proverbial grave.

Make of it what you will fellow ramblers!

Speak soon!

The Bumpkin Rambler xx