Admin1 is rereading Slough House by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary.
Category: wildlife
Long-tailed Tit
A fluffy little critter tweeting in the branches.
Admin1 is rereading Joe Country by Mick Herron. Admin2’s old book to reread was The Man Who Japed by Philip K Dick; the protagonist, driven by unconscious desires, subverts the country’s morals with propaganda. Couldn’t happen here.
Critter of the Day: Speckled Wood
A butterfly sitting on the grass of No Mow May.
Admin1 is rereading Slow Horses by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North.
Critters of the Day: Collared Doves
Are you looking at my bird?
Admin1 is reading A High Mortality of Doves (ooh, sorry, doves) by Kate Ellis. Admin2 is reading Dead Man’s Lane, also by Kate Ellis.
The solar panels reached double figures (10.163kWh) for the first time this year today.
Easter Eggs
Magpies have built a fine nest next to our house (apparently magpies nest next to humans to keep away their crow kin) and today Admin1 sent up the drone to look for blue eggs or fluffy chicks, but they had built a roof and the tree was in leaf so no luck.
Meanwhile Admin1 had his first stab at making a Battenburg cake which turned out extremely well. A lovely meal was had by all and we scored 11 on the GSQ.
Admin1 is reading The Stone Chamber by Kate Ellis and Admin2 is reading Rewind by Catherine Ryan Howard, which was extremely implausible.
Elusive Butterfly
First peacock butterfly of spring, photographed at a distance in some other person’s garden.
Admin1 is reading What You Pay For by Claire Askew and Admin2 is reading 84K by another Claire, Claire North, which has been languishing on our shelves, unintentionally unopened, for the last five years and now, with its corporate-capture government dystopia, seems even more prescient.
Critter of the Day: Pigeon
Looking over its shoulder.
Admin1 is reading The Ottoman Secret by Raymond Khoury. Admin2 is rereading We Can Build You by Philip K Dick, which abandons the storyline of plucky robotics startup versus bald American hypercapitalist halfway through to segue into a mass of psychobabble about a love-hate relationship between two mentally challenged characters.
Magpie
We have an infestation of these smartly dressed birds at the moment. They are as bad as squirrels.
Admin1 is reading I Know What I Saw by Imran Mahmood, which Admin2 liked but Admin1 just found highly irritating. Admin2 is reading Right to Kill by John Barlow. Today was our equal warmest day this year: 15.0°C
Tweet Tweet
A robin flying through the ivy. Merry Women’s Day Eve everybody!
Admin1 is reading Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, a wonderful and engrossing novel about books, libraries, and hope in dark times. Admin2 is reading The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez Reverte, an overblown Eco-esque conspiracy thriller linking The Three Musketeers with a manual for summoning the devil.
A Pigeon Flies over Plum Blossoms in the Spring Sunshine
Happy Pancake/St Dave’s Day everybody.
February was seasonally cold and less than averagely sunny but it was by far the rainiest month since our records began: 162.6mm.
Admin2 is reading The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Hello Mr Chips
Squirrel Nutcase is still eating our bird food but at least he isn’t eating our tulips for a change.
Admin2 is reading I Know What I Saw by Imran Mahmood, an engaging story about a homeless person with a faulty memory.
We scored 11.5 on the GSQ.
Critter of the Day: Blue Tit
A little bird tells us that today is an auspicious and wonderful day in a specific and limited way!
Meanwhile, on the preferred pronouns front, Admin1 is rereading It by Stephen King and Admin2 is reading The This by Adam Roberts; a Hegelian riposte to the Kantian The Thing Itself, but also a rollicking skiffy adventure.
Blackbirds in and out of Focus
A very artistic picture without any manipulation.
Admin1 is rereading Insomnia by Stephen King. Admin2 is reading Game of Thrones by George RR Martin.
Critters of the Day: Starlings
Welcome to these two representatives of a great and greedy flock, dull at a distance but spangled with iridescent sequins in close-up.
Admin2 is rereading Next to Nature, Art by Penelope Fitzgerald; arty people arrive for a course at a country house before the age of social media.
We scored FOURTEEN on the GSQ; 14.5 if you count a narrow miss, which we didn’t.
Squirrel
This critter is praying for more bird food. Tuff luck; it’s eaten it all.
Admin1 is rereading Needful Things by Stephen King. Admin2 is rereading Transcription by Kate Atkinson.
Critters of the Day: Magpies
Two for joy.
Admin1 is reading Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden by Rose Simpson, Incredible String Band luminary and one-time mayor of Aberystwyth.
Not in a Pie
Not a red red robin but a black black blackbird to greet us on Christmas morning. We have had a quiet day, saving up for the family occasion tomorrow (lateral flow tests permitting).
Admin1 is rereading Ten-second Staircase by Christopher Fowler.
Critter of the Day: Magpie
A black and white bird in a technicolor tree in the afternoon sun.
Admin1 is reading The Dying Day by Vaseem Khan (hey Mr Author, your research is showing!). Admin2 is reading Surgeons’ Hall by ES Thomson.
We scored 9.5 on the GSQ.
Stupid Squirrel
Hanging by its back feet, stealing grub from the bird feeder, which we later discovered empty and broken. Sorry birds.
Admin1 is reading Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken Macleod. Enigmatic aliens! Scottish FTL submarines! Libertarian left politics! What’s not to like?
Admin2 is reading The Lying-Down Room by Anna Jaquiery
Starling the Show
Singing a song for us.
Admin1 is reading the 700+-page Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, which posits a high-tech solution to climate change, along with its drawbacks and political problems. In typical fashion for NS, the digressions along the way are much of the appeal: Punjabi stick-fighting, microwaving grapes, eagles vs drones, Netherlands royalty, how to tie a turban, the Line of Actual Control, Texan feral pigs, skycranes, and much else.
Admin2 is reading the 900+-page Anathem, also by Neal Stephenson.
We scored 8 on the GSQ.
Critter of the Day: Red Admiral
A warm and sunny day, and this fresh-out-of-the-chrysalis butterfly graced our garden with its presence.
Admin1 is reading Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds and Admin2 is reading The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth.
We scored 11 on the GWQ.
Exploring the Cosmos
A bee gets a taste of a daisy.
August was colder than June and July, saw 75mm of rain and managed to be the third least sunny August ever by just 3kWh.
Admin1 is reading The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth. Admin2 is rereading La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman.
Some Cats and Many Colours
Owing to roadworks, Admin2 took a different route today and spotted this charming arrangement on some steps.
Admin1 is reading The Other Mother by Michel Bussi. Admin2 is rereading Big Sky by Kate Atkinson.
Critter of the Day: Starling
We put our fruit bowl outside to entice the fruit flies out of the kitchen and the tits went for the fruit instead. But here is a starling of sense eating the bird food.
Admin1 is reading The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas. Admin2 is reading The Killing Kind by Jane Casey, a horrible book about horrible people.
Critter of the Day: Peacock
First one we’ve seen all year. Photo is a bit subdued because it was taken though the window at an angle.
Admin1 is reading This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas. Admin2 is reading First Light by Peter Ackroyd: astronomers, archaeologists, Aldebaran and agriculturalists.