I'm poorly!
I had a close encounter with a robin in the garden yesterday.
I stood still and waited for it to take fright / flight, which I thought was inevitable bearing in mind I had a a fully operational lawnmower in my hands, but it just perched on the fence and eyeballed me. So I cut the mower and waited for it to fly off. Which it didn't.
By this time it was dark, and I think the the bird was pleasantly surprised to find a madman mowing the lawn at 6pm in November. It folowed me round companionably for a spell (looking for grubs in the grass, you know. I'm not stupid enough [10 stupid points, remember] to think it wanted to be my friend)while I tried to get the place fit for the weekend's visitors.
This was a more succesful attempt to be nice to the birds. Last week me n the littlun found ourselves in Aldi buying a birdfeeder to cheer us up before he went back to "see mummy" - but to be honest I've not seen any cheep-cheeps anywhere near it.
It does successfully feed seed into its little tray, though. I found this out when attempting to nail a Catherine wheel to the wooden pole I nailed it to, and being showered with birdseed in the process.
Catherine wheels are generally one of life's disappointments, I think, but this one was quite spectacular - it spun like a dervish for quite some time, spraying different coloured sparks all over he place, blackening the pole it was nailed to before spinning out of control and setting fire to a bush.
Littlun's reactions moved from "verry verrry scared" to "gracious me" and "colours so pretty"
So that was good.
Here's something for you cold people:
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
D H Lawrence
Famous Robin anyone.
Robin Cook for one....
03/11/06 @ 10:49