I don’t know where the last 5 months went, since the start of the pandemic and quarantine, but the time has flown by. This Summer we had 3 continuous months of hard unrelenting rain which caused huge mould problems in the house. We occasionally had a warm couple of days, around 30 C, but nothing […]
Category Archive: bird watching
As soon as the world went like this: we packed up and bugged out to the village house. While we were planning to move there over Easter for the holidays, we decided to move early. This was both a plus and a minus as, while the house allows us more space and there’s less people […]
Our lives out here are completely affected by the seasons and the various events and changes which happen within them, far more so than if we lived in an urban environment. Autumn brings with it the crazy rush to get wood in and prepared for winter, both day and night Red Deer stags cry out […]
On an extremely spontaneous impulse we decided to stay the weekend at the house for the first time since leaving it on New Year’s Day. It’s been a long, harsh winter this year and having a couple of days of heat and blue sky was too irresistible. Unfortunately, the interior of the house is still […]
It’s a very long way to Peljesac, Croatia, and it’s an even longer way back… This summer holiday we rented a place on the sea in a remote area of the southern Peljesac peninsula (6kms to the nearest basic shop – that’s remote). As usual we drove south through Slovakia, then went from the East […]
This evening I’m a happy man as I finally managed to photograph the annoyingly elusive black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius). These birds, along with the golden oriole I photographed earlier this year, have been tauting me for decades. Similarly, neither species of bird seems to sit still long enough to be photographed. They’re crap photos I […]
Today I went to check on the house and got to drive through some pretty thick snow. Vlochka, my Discovery, really has her use sometimes. On the way home I spotted a Ural owl just sitting on a branch about twenty feet from the road. For once, the sky was vaguely blue and the bright […]
I really thought we’d get away with a mild winter this year and thus didn’t bother switching off my water. After seeing this week’s forecast, with temperatures dropping below minus 20, we headed out to the house to switch everything off and drain the pipes. It never saves everything – there’s always the odd tap […]
A double rainbow… Summer just wasn’t long enough this year. In fact, life isn’t long enough. There are so many things to do and see, and places to go. Autumn is being a real let down with night time temperatures around zero, meaning it looks like we’re just going to go straight into winter. I […]
Summer is finally here and with it comes a selection of animals that we don’t see at other times of the year. Sadly, even after a horrifically long and cold winter, we’ve only had a few hot days thus far. Hopefully, the weather will pick up at some point. Probably the most noticeable summer visitor […]
