The Bluestocking Womens Pub in an Adventure with Pirates!

[Magpiecomplex]

New thread. You know the deal - women's pub, men to the Staunch Ally next door.

Some of us are currently on the trail of an international seed smuggling ring, just for background information.

🤫

Well back at home after a lovely weekend but knackered.

off to my gardening business tomorrow.

mine looks like a jungle so will also make a start on that.

so bath and bed for me a glass of wine at the end of the bath.

Pin Mill always makes me think of the Arthur Ransome book, We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea.

I was out with B&B this afternoon - breezy but still very warm, lovely varied clouds with blue between them - when I heard a some birdsong that I couldn't place at all. Normally I can hazard a guess. I'm quite often wrong, but I do at least recognise the songs of a lot of the common birds, even I can't ID all of them properly. This was different: a few quick chirps, then a short burst of incredibly complex chirping, coming out of a young oak tree. I whipped out Merlin, and carried on walking towards the oak.

Chirp-chirp-chirp chirpettychirpettychirpchirpchirpchirpchirpy-CHIRP

Corn bunting, said Merlin, and added a helpful little red list symbol. Quite why that oak tree, with barley in behind and wheat in front, and a scruffy ditch at its feet, should have ended up with a corn bunting I do not know. I am nerdy enough to be really quite excited.

I'm jealous, corn buntings are extinct in Ireland.

One night at work at about 3 o'clock I snuck outside for a smoke.
A small brown bird was singing on a rooftop close by. There are Mabinogion stories around these here parts about people who have stopped, seemingly briefly, to listen to this enchanting song but when they have eventually continued their journey home have discovered that the landscapes and their relatives have matured or died and centuries have passed.
When touched, the birdsong-listeners crumble into dust.
Having heard the nightingale that night, I can quite believe these tales. I was captivated.

Happy birthday and welcome back @Myfluffyblanket

Evening All,

Welcome back to the Bluestocking and a Happy Birthday to @Myfluffyblanket 🎂

After a slightly doubtful start weatherwise, the sun came out today and I've been for a longish walk with my sister and niece this afternoon, looking at the Roman landmarks around Ribchester (which the Romans called Bremetennacum). Lots of the walls around the town have stones recycled from the old Roman buildings in them.

@MyrtleLion I have loved the Gosie chronicles, not least because I was able to don a new persona as a result - less crumbly and more dauntless I think my favourite bits are the small 'asides', such as the gerbils discovering chairs that can spin😂 I still have no idea how this is going to end, but I look forward to finding out and will be happy to see Gosie et al in new adventures.

When I arrived home I went out to water my pots and found a little fledgling Blue Tit on the path under my bedroom window. A smudge and a couple of feathers on the window told me it had probably flown into the window and it was looking very dazed, but not obviously injured. I have a relative who is a keen ornithologist, so was able to find out the best thing to do. I popped it into a box in the garage in the dark to rest for a while away from predators and when I went out a bit later I could hear it cheeping, so I let it out and am glad to say it was able to fly away🤗

Sorry, Deano.
OTOH, you don't have to worry about adders.

Our neighbour just interrupted our evening to tell us we have water leaking over our front door. It isn’t a big leak just dripping water.

Our bedroom is just above but has no water in it and no stains on the ceiling indicating there’s a leak from the bathroom above. The Walrus has had a good look with a torch above our fitted cupboards and realised there is a down foul water pipe in the corner that leads from the bathroom.

As DSD had a bath today to soothe her very sore back (she twisted it badly a week ago and didn’t mention it till Friday when we encouraged her to talk online to the GP who prescribed naproxin - it’s that bad), we think that the down pipe probably doesn’t have capacity to draw bath water away quickly enough. Maybe a joint isn’t tight enough. Hopefully it won’t involve dismantling the fitted cupboards…

Anyway that is the little drama for the evening and I require Manhattans and Julie Bindel’s Lesbian Negronis on tap.

Happy birthday, @Myfluffyblanket. I hope you are having a fabulous day 🍾

Thanks Myrtle, i have had a lovely day. All my sons, a couple of DGC and a best friend pitched up with potted plants, flowers and cards and admiration for my new car.
I too have a mystery drip above the kitchen door.
Tea towels and duct tape will have to do until I can be bothered to clamber up there and sort it out properly.

@Myfluffyblanket When I lived in Wiltshire, there was an old orchard over the wall behind my house. I used to sit in my garden in the summer and listen to the nightingale. It really is the sweetest birdsong. We don't get them this far north, unfortunately, so it must be twenty years since I heard one.

Yes - there’s a lot in those books which stuck firmly in my mind as both a source of knowledge and imagination. I shall have to revisit Coot Club and The Big Six prior to a trip on the Broads in July, though as this time it’s the southern rather than northern part we won’t be starting by provisioning at Roy’s of Wroxham.

Welcome to the Bluestocking @Myfluffyblanket. The payment system is incredibly simple. You receive whatever you ordered and a gerbil will present you with a chit. You sign the chit. The gerbil, having.no understanding of how chits work, promptly throws it in the recycling.and you get to pay nothing. Ain't that sweet?

Having a Fiat 500 convertible automatically makes you my kind of people. Welcome!

Having loved all your cat stories earlier, I'm now loving your bird stories - corn bunting, nightingale - wonderful

I have a confession to make :
well into adulthood, I didn't think the nightingale was a real bird. Like the bluebird. Not the North American bluebird, the Bluebird of Happiness kind of bluebird. Mythical.

I don't think they are resident in Ireland, so that partly excuses my ignorance!

Yesterday , to the consternation of her parents, this fledgling blue tit decided perching wherever I was seemed an excellent plan.

I kept moving away so they could feed her, and she'd follow me anyway. In the end I sat by the deep flower bed and she went in there, safer from the crows and the neighbourhood cats.

I have a walk in range where I can reliably hear nightingales at the right time of year. They have the most beautiful song.

I was out in the garden the other day and thought I heard a cuckoo, at distance - just the louder 'Koo!' part of the call. I kept listening and it must have moved closer, because after a few minutes I heard the full 'Cuc-koo!' on repeat.

I was on a biodiversity farm walk last weekend and there were a few 'koo' sounds from a distant field. Baby blue tits are so sweet and so idiotic.

To make up for our lack of corn buntings and nightingales, we do have very handsome crows. A pairs is nesting in one of the trees that until a few years ago was always full of rooks, and although I miss the rooks terribly I do admire them.

I have hooded crow envy.
We just get the ordinary kind.

We have blackbirds and jackdaws in the garden and an occasional robin. There are also crows near the river.

But mostly we have very fat pigeons.

I wish we had something more exotic.

We have quite a variety at some times of year. But at the moment I’m following the advice not to put out seed so I’m not getting my usual customers.
Theres a good variety in our hinterland as there’s a range of habitats - but no nightingales or, afaik, corn buntings.

Are those 'hooded crows'? The ones with grey parts?
I have lots of them in my garden.
The other day I caused Birdmageddon by putting out a lot of crusts in one go.

Nothing happened for about two minutes, then the sky was full of gulls, magpies, crows, hooded crows [as I now know them to be], all engaging in aerial warfare.
One hooded crow sat on the bird table and scoffed its way methodically through everything on it. Ignored anything swooping towards it or cawing at it, any battles going on on the ground, it just chomp chomp chomped [or whatever] until it was all gone. None of this 'carrying stuff away to feed the young' mullarkey😄

The other birds fought over what was on the ground. The gulls came off second best, and had to resort to swooping in to pick up anything they could.

One magpie picked up a big crust and flew to the roof of the shed where it watched the mayhem below, nibbling away at the crust like it was popcorn🍿

When the dust settled, three magpies came back and picked up all the remainders, unchallenged, in their own sweet time

Hooded crows are generally only seen in Scotland, parts of Ireland and the Isle of Man. They're often called 'hoodies' by bird enthusiasts, which makes them sound quite cool 😁

Our heatwave has definitely broken today. Rain on and off and much cooler. The gardens were in dire need of rain though. Time to get the indoor jobs done, they've been a bit neglected recently.

First though, a large white coffee and a real cornish pasty, please gerbils.

I agree, Damson, the only place I've seen hoodies is in Scotland. Usually murdering the chicks of my friends ' poultry flock, to be honest.

Saying that, I had to take protective measures with my own crowd yesterday, who were decidedly too interested in the fledgling blue tit. They'd already made off with chicks from the magpies' nest.

Will leave you all to imagine the amount of noise that involved. Magpies in a screaming match with crows can get very, very loud.