In which I take a photo every day that I'm 50, and post it here on this blog, with a bit of related blurb.
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| vacancy |
Friday night sure rolls around quickly of late...
This evening we found that they've now finished harvesting the fields around us, which frees up the access to the hole side of Barney the barn owl's tree.
As you can see, it's a lovely shelter, with a solid platform inside a big old tree. I've seen three young perched in here in the past, but they haven't nested here this year.
Bizarrely, the tree is actually still alive, albeit much of it is hollow...
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| entish |
We've had glimpses of Barney in several of these holes, and he seemed to be able to move around fairly freely in there.
It's a very cool old tree, anyway.
In other news, the Killer Queen is on the rampage at the moment...
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| ritual sacrifice |
I found this vole on the rug in the kitchen when I got home.
Within 5 minutes of opening the front door, Loz came in with a live, squeaking juvenile vole...I chased her out and got her to let it go, but within minutes she was back with another one.
I shut her in for a bit, which she was really offended about...but later in the evening she was back out, and bringing more struggling young voles back, to the extent that we've had to shut her in again.
At the moment she's prowling the window sill, looking out into the night longingly, and miaowing at me in a frustrated tone.
I presume the harvest has flushed lots of small animals into the hedgerow, and Loz just wants to go out there and sweep them all up, as I'm sure Barney would be if he were around...he's a vole hoover too.
I've watched him hunt in the meadow (the next field over), and he was getting a kill every few minutes and brining it back to his young in the tree above...he must have killed a couple of dozen a day, at least.
Hopefully the tidal wave of death and torture will subside in a day or two...
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| impressive |
Speaking of which, my 'boarding injury is now a large, swollen bruise on my forearm...suffice to say, I wore a short sleeved polo shirt today in order to impress everyone with my war wound.
I'm sure that will have had the desired effect, won't it?
One of my staff asked me what I done, and when I told him he said (as predicted),
"How old are you?! There's some kids out the front doing loads of tricks on skateboards and bikes, it's crazy...they're about ten years old...".
So I'm fairly sure he's impressed with my youthful energy and enthusiasm.
I think that was his point anyway...
...yeah, that's probably it...
;-)
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| case to rest |
I don't know about you, but I thought I detected a hint of scepticism in Andy's comments on a recent post about local birds.
I'd mentioned that we have tree sparrows in the garden, but had failed to provide documentary evidence, and so apparently had not done enough to offload the burden of proof.
Tree sparrows are much less common than house sparrows, and so I suppose it was fair to demand photographic evidence of my evidently bold claim.
Well, it's taken a while, but as I was getting dressed for work this morning, I spotted this little chap sitting high in the hedgerow just a few metres from our bedroom window.
"I'm sure that's a tree sparrow!", I exclaimed, immediately failing to grasp the significance and rushing to grab the DSLR...fortunately Anna was there to point this out to me, so I dashed downstairs to get the camera and rattled off a few shots.
It seems I still had a reasonable dose of the usual morning fuzzy-headedness, as I completely forgot to adjust anything at all on the camera...so the pictures aren't great, to be honest...
...but that is definitely a tree sparrow!
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| cheeky chappy |
This is a juvenile, but still you can clearly see the brown cap and the tell-tale dark dot on the cheek.
Thanks Andy, I accept your apology! ;-)
Moving on...our walk down the lane this evening was notable in a variety of ways.
Firstly, it was distinct from our usual walks in that we hardly walked, instead deciding to travel by skateboard (or is it technically a long board...or both?).
This was good fun, despite getting a slightly scary wobble on at the steepest, fastest part of the lane, trying to avoid random stones thrown all over the road by recent harvesting traffic.
Down at the bottom of the valley (sans decent camera, of course), we came across the beautiful sight of a pair of deer wandering across the stubble in the evening sunshine.
At least I had my phone with me, so I got the proof (cough, Andy...) although pretty much failed to capture any hint of the atmosphere...
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| not too dear |
Finally, I got my first 'boarding injury!!
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| ouch stings |
As it happened, this wasn't from careering (or is it careening? Actually, both!!) down the hill, out of control...it was from doing tricks outside the front door...or trying to, at least.
Ok, ok, I was failing to do tricks outside the front door...or is it the back door? That's a matter of some controversy!
"What on earth are you doing skateboarding?!" I hear you cry...
Well, I'm not really sure, but I think it has something to do with my age...and a hefty dollop of denial thereof.
Bah humbug!
B-/
We had a busy and adventurous weekend, as you will have seen from previous blogposts.
On both days we took quite a few videos, which I bunged up onto Youtube, and then had a play with the simple video editing facilities. It's not a perfect system by a long stretch, but at least it's possible to rapidly edit a few clips into one, and put some backing music on it.
The video above took literally 10 minutes to edit the four short clips together, add some music and a bit of video post-processing, to end up with a nice little memento of our 'boarding fun.
The clip ends somewhat abruptly (there's no fade feature!), but for 10 minutes work, I'm really happy with it.
This next video took an hour or two, but turned out equally well. With climbing video's it's imperative that you edit out all the pre-climb faffing about, and cut really tightly to the climbing. And of the course the addition of text, some short clips, many more transitions and several music tracks all added to the editing time.
But in both cases, the finished clips capture something of the essence of the days adventures.
Fun Times!
B-)
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| challenge complete |
Today, I grabbed another significant tick from my 50th year challenge list...skateboarding!
Here I am celebrating with my main man Jezz (who is just setting out on his own long list of 40th year challenges). He helpfully brought some skateboards (long boards, apparently) round to our house, and we set off down the lane to have a go.
These things are so much better than when I was a kid!
And they're great fun...
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| getting the hang of it |
First off we learnt to simply cruise on the boards. They're quite long, wide and stable, and we had little difficulty getting going on them.
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| graceful as ever |
Anna managed to get about half a mile on her first go without touching the ground!
Jezz, of course, was completely comfortable from the off...
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| nice socks |
Anna bravely headed into the steepest section without hesitation, although we reached speeds where we certainly did not want to fall off!
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| she' s outta here... |
Jezz took it casually, of course - he still can't resist posing at every opportunity...
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| 40 going on 14 |
...but then I couldn't help posing a little myself!
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| 50 going on 15 |
Jezz showed me a couple of tricks so we spent some time messing about trying not to break our ankles!
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| mid-flip |
I managed a bit of tricking too, which I was pleased about!
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| mid-flip |
I was quite pleased to do fairly well on the skateboards...I put it down to Tai Chi!
I learnt a little Tai Chi a couple of years ago, and one thing that really stayed with me was the Tai Chi Walk. I've practised it now and then ever since, and it's taught me huge amounts about balance and controlled weight transfer.
The improvements in my balance I took with me into climbing, where it's really helped...and further, I've now brought it into skateboarding, and it's enabled me to quickly feel relaxed and comfortable on the board.
We also tried some wheelies...
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| grabbing some air |
I just need to do it when in motion!
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| bendy board |
At the end of all that we were surprisingly hot and sweaty...turned out it was mostly easiest to walk back up the hill, which didn't help!
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| job done |
All in all, I really enjoyed it...it's definitely something I'm going to have a bit of a play with!
I have some videos which I will post in a bonus entry at some point soon!
For tonight, I'm really pleased to tick off another of my challenges...
Super-psyched, in fact!
B-)
