But first, an overdue species update.

31. Painted Lady
32. Brimstone
33. Grey Heron (trying to eat our goldfish, I expect)
34. Grey Partridge* (on our front lawn)
35. Orange Tip*

Also saw a Mute Swan and Coot between Bishopsbourne and Bridge, but that's a bit too far from home to count as walking distance unless I actually walk there from home.

( And now some photos )

1. Stick the earth spike in the ground
   
2. Loop the metal bit over the fence
   
3. Squint at the LED in the bright sunlight
   
4. Put your hand over the LED to shade it enough to see if it's flashing
   
5. Get your hand zapped with 3,000 volts
   
6. The fence is working

26. Herring gull
27. Small tortoiseshell
28. Peacock* (the butterfly, not the bird, though in fact there are peacock birds near here (but they're not wild))
29. Green woodpecker
30. Tawny owl* (been hearing them ever since we moved in, but I finally saw one flying across the road while driving home from an evening out)

25. Common frog. Two of them, in amplexus in our fish pond. Which will do them no good as the fish will eat all the eggs.

22. Badger* (I'm reasonably certain ( Read more... )

The Aga's ovens aren't very wide, but they're deep. And so I want a bread/pizza peel that I can use to take full advantage of them and put a large pizza or three loaves into the oven. That means that the blade needs to be 12" x 18", and I can't find any such thing on the Internet -- there are some things that size that call themselves pizza peels, ( Read more... )

Jonny has started shedding his winter coat, so we can look forward to several months of having all of our clothes covered with horsehair.

16. Grey squirrel
17. House sparrow
18. Kestrel*
19. Mallard (swimming around in a field...)
20. Coal tit*
21. Great spotted woodpecker

The last two were spotted while doing the RSPB's Great Garden Birdwatch survey just now (along with 3 blackbirds, 5 blue tits, 11 chaffinches, a dunnock, 3 great tits, 4 greenfinches, 2 magpies, a robin and 3

Since my friends list seems to be full of this kind of thing at present ( Read more... )

12. Robin
13. Buzzard
14. Dunnock
15. Starling

No photos yet of any of those. I'm pretty sure that Mrs nwhyte was correct to suggest that I've mis-labelled a female chaffinch as a greenfinch, but I definitely have seen greenfinches, so they stay on the list.