Busy, Busy Bee!

Well, I didn't get much birding in today – in fact so little, its hardly worth mentioning!

I spent most of today with a very kind person (Eddie) who helped me to remove all the panes of glass from the damaged greenhouse, take the frame apart etc, whilst I stacked it all round next door's garden. The neighbour said he would dispose of it for me, being as it was his tree that fell into the greenhouse in the first place! It was a perfect day for working outside, sunny, mild and no rain – quite lucky really. A song thrush appeared in the garden along with a pair of robins and also watched a great spotted woodpecker bounding across the neighbour's garden. Also repaired the central fence and another piece of recently, wind blown trellis!

My garden now looks a complete wreck of plant pots, old plant trays etc etc and needs a massive revamp. Next Saturday has been booked to put up five fence panels and posts etc and then my garden will at last be enclosed again. Weekends after that need to be spent taking tons of stuff to the local dump. After that it will be spring and Hot Birding!!!

With the greenhouse removed, I now need to decide what to do with my garden. It would be great to come home from work, to find that I'm on one of those TV garden make-over programmes, and that my garden has been transformed into a mini paradise! Dream on Penny! Choices, choices...... nature pond, vegetable plot (not really big enough), chickens. I have always wanted to keep my own chickens and collect my own fresh eggs, but again I don't think my garden is quite big enough. My parents always kept chickens when we were small children and I remember excitedly going to the hen house to pick up newly laid eggs. Well I say 'hen house', it was in fact a third of one of the sheds! We had names for all the hens, but I can't remember them now. Neither can I remember what breed the hens were, but they were an inky, jet black with a rainbow of colours that shimmered in the sunshine. We used to pick up cuttle fish off the beach at Holme as the hens loved to peck at these for calcium carbonate (needed for egg production). That's made me think...... can't remember the last time I saw cuttle fish on the beach!

Anyway at 3.30pm I gave Eddie a lift to Titchwell RSPB for him to meet up with his friend Simon to go birding etc and get a lift back to Cley. On route we stopped for moments only, to watch 16 Corn Buntings sitting on wires at Choseley Barns. It's Eddie's birthday tomorrow, so gave him a few presents to celebrate his day, as well as a thank you gift for all his hard work and expertise today – I certainly couldn't have done it without him. As soon as I dropped Eddie off, I drove straight back to King's Lynn to continue sorting through garden rubbish, pots etc and filling my 'brown' bin until 6.45pm. I noticed several bats zipping round the garden and with a blackbird singing at dusk, it really felt like the beginnings of 'Spring'. I collapsed on the sofa for the rest of the evening!