Baby Balloon

 The dogs and I thought we would go to a local nature reserve just up the hill called Pé de  JoJo

but as we were nearing the aerodrome that adjoins the reserve parking we saw these.

Here you can see the filling station for the local small aircraft - as opposed to balloons that use gas. In the next shot of this smaller one-man version, the gas tanks are behind him and the burner above.

  An update on the Brent Geese - these are pale-bellied ones who fly at night so the ones here had only just set off to get their bearings via the sun then use the moon and stars - they are heading slowly towards Siberia and aiming to be there for the breeding season, they stop a lot on the way sometimes for a few days at a time and are in no real hurry. Happy and safe flying..........to these and the ones we saw and heard the next night honking to each other as they flew over in the pitch dark constantly communicating with each other. 

Finally here is Mr Pu eating his first bread he has been watching the ducks and liked what he tried,

after all he is a vegetarian so maybe I will make him lettuce sandwiches in the summer. I will show you more of Pu and his bread another time. I am not sure what has happened to his ear but I would say he caught it on the brambles around the pond.

I know the last video was not visible to everyone for some reason so here goes again......

Around the Pond

In and around the pond over the past few days.................

Firstly this chap has been hanging around at the edge of the ice but this is the best shot I could get as the alarm goes up with the ducks moorhens etc so off it goes............

Here is one of our Blackbirds picking berries although it can be difficult to get to them as you can see.

One minute you are standing there then the ground just falls away

 I expect somebody will be popping out yellow ones later.

I have never really tried to film video let alone try to add it to my blog but here goes.....

I hope it gives you a better idea what these guys get up to.

These are what I think of as our tree decorations, they are now quite a large colony of House Sparrows who constantly chatter to each other and fly around as one flock.

Finally around five thirty just as I was feeding the ducks their tea this V formation containing over ninety of what I think are Brent Geese flew by heading north for some reason.

Mr Pu has a scratch

Having not seen Pu for a for a few days since the pond had frozen over I presumed he had left his outdoor nest and moved to semi hibernate in one of the tunnels his predecessors had made in the bank. He is now living in the tunnels but today he came out to say hello.

He has very poor vision and hearing so swam around the hole in the ice the ducks have kept to swim in and stay safe, then out he popped or should I say crawled, digging his long sharp nails into the ice as you can see.

Although the ducks are wary of Mr Pu and get out of his way they are happy for him to be close as he is no real threat.

 

Then he stopped and had a scratch and the look on his face says it all - plus it gives us a chance to see his orange teeth and very human like hands that are in fact feet. In this shot you can't see the webbing between the toes ( unlike the one below ) making them look like hands with finger nails, but of course we would not say this if he was not an albino giving this pink colour as the normal browny- grey would look far from human.   

Then one quick sniff and he was back in the water and away into a tunnel.

Here one of our female blackbirds gets the berries from one of our Pyracantha.

Then it's oops were did that branch go.............

and below is one of my better shots of a Blackbird poo show the colour of the berries they have eaten; some very red some orange and some yellow, this one is a mixture of yellow and orange - now ain't that interesting. 

Here are two shots of one of our very timid Moorhens who only come out when they think you have gone away after feeding the ducks. One of the reasons we don't see them much is that they hide, perching in our fir trees where they are very hard to find as you can see below.

More Snow

We have had another 100mm plus of snow through the night and this morning, so with what we already had from Monday it is now around around 200/250mm all over the garden making it even more difficult for the wildlife to do their normal routine of eating, staying warm etc. So here are a few shots of things we do not normally see...............

The Chickens never normally use their wings but at the moment they are using them a lot to get balance when going over or along snow drifts, they make great trapeze artists . 

Waiting around risking a peck from a big beak - the wagtail I have nicknamed Phil Mitchell who is a bully, seeing off any other birds the same size or smaller, he had second thoughts with one of our large tummied Blackbirds who uncharacteristically has come very close to the house.

This is Phil all puffed up trying to look hard and keeping warm by getting air in between its feathers making it warm and keeping it there.   Below are two of the others he chases away..............

Normally the Pintails and Mallards stay apart but at times like this they mix and Nip the female Pintail in the centre of the picture can stand up for her self very well when needed.

As soon as they have the bread in their beaks they will then go back to the water to break it down so they can digest it. What is making the rings as Nip and Tuck sucking the water through to filter it and make the food a lot smaller .

Tracks on the Tracks

Today the temperature dropped even more down to around minus seven so we still have the snow and we now have a lot oft racks around from all the animals and birds, so today I have added a few of the ones I saw around........................

But first here is a shot of the male Chaffinch I said I would try to get - you can see he has a darker head and back of neck and the red  chest is far more prominent.

On leaving the house the first things I found were these they look like the old arrows they put on convicts uniforms, they are are made by our Chickens, the others are my size 8 boots and the ones at the bottom are cat Tiger's.

These are from our Mallards the still have three points but you can see the webbed joining sections. 

Although similar to the Chickens these are a lot lighter and thinner and belong to our Moorhens.

 

These all belong to Rabbits along the railway, you can see how they hop rather than walk plus how much they have been coming and going over the last two days.

Although at first glance they seem the same these are made by a Hare and have longer flatter back feet they use to push off and bounce with and do not really use their front ones in the same way as rabbits. 

Here we have a Mr Fox's paw prints. In the seventies the French government in their wisdom paid the farmers to remove hedgerows to give more productive large fields, similar to those in the US.

The farmers took the money but kept the fields the same size - this meant that the wildlife no longer had their green hedges to use to get from place to place, so they turned to the railways and now use them as byways, highways and motorways. The Foxes now use these to get from home to prey etc.

so we are always finding signs of them when out walking.

Finally a Great Tit looking for goodies in the snow..............