First butterfly of spring on the hottest day of the year so far: 23.4°C.
A2 is rereading A Snowball in Hell by Christopher Brookmyre.
Category: wildlife
Starlings
A bird showing off the ring on its leg while its mates preen themselves in the background.
A1 is reading The Wilding by Ian McDonald. A2 is rereading A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre.
Magnolia World
A fly exploring the central castle. Here is an overview of the magnolia population:
A1 is reading A Wake of Crows* by Kate Evans. A2 is rereading A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away by Christopher Brookmyre.
Cats of Japan
A1’s new game is Assassin’s Creed Shadows, set in 16th century Japan. There are samurai, ronin, cherry blossom, lords and peasants…
…and cats!
Dogs too, but you can’t have everything.
Addendum: A2 noticed the unusual tail — this is a Japanese bobtail. According to a source of the time, “It has no mind to hunt for rats and mice but just wants to be carried and stroked by women.” 🙂
Critter of the Day: Undocumented Migrant
Found among the imported herbs in the supermarket, this unidentified hitchhiker. Probably one of the random species that arrives every year.
A2 is reading Almost like a Whale by Steve Jones.
Tit for Tat
A random bird for lack of better photos. Apparently there are all seven planets on view tonight but it’s cloudy and we can only see Jupiter. It was a grey day too, but it’s also Gray Day so A2 is reading Unlikely Stories, Mostly by Alasdair Gray.
Walking on the Moon
First six-legged critter of the year. Welcome back, our insect overladies. Look northeast of the beetle at a stone that looks like a cartoon cat, eyes and ears and all.
A1 is rereading A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is reading The Wilding by Ian McDonald; a bit of Holdstock, a bit of Vandermeer and a smattering of Stephen King, all stirred into a bog in Ireland.
Another Bird
Pyrrhula pyrrhula, the twice-named bullfinch.
A1 is rereading Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is reading Nobody’s Hero by MW Craven.
Robin Not Hiding
A1 finally managed to sneak up on the redbreast unawares. There are all sorts of birds about at the moment, trying to hook up for the mating season.
A2 is rereading The Testaments by Margaret Atwood.
Robin Hiding
Here’s a glimpse of the elusive bird that has been tormenting us with its vanishing tricks. One day we’ll catch it in the open.
We had macaroni cheese, vegetable and fruit salads and a sad-looking but tasty brick-like air-fried courgette cake for our family dinner and scored 12.5 on the GSQ; thx everybody and happy birthday eve Bob.
A1 is rereading Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is rereading Machines like Me by Ian McEwan.
Maggie and Baggie
Up high, under a grey sky, a magpie accompanied by a birdlike bin bag.
A1 is rereading One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is reading Cult* by Camilla Lackberg and Hendrik Fexeus.
Dunnock of the Day
A shy hedge sparrow hiding in the bushes on a dark and cloudy day.
A1 is rereading Be My Enemy by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is rereading Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw.
Tit of the Day
A2 spends minutes at a time looking out of the window and being teased by a vanishing robin, small bits of goldfinch and a wandering rat, along with all the blackbirds, starlings and squirrels, but here is a processed blue tit.
A2 is rereading The Dwarves of Death by Jonathan Coe.
Crowing
A crow in a tree.
A1 is reading Trapped* by Camilla Lackberg and Hendrik Fexeus. A1 was less impressed with this, getting very bored with one protagonist’s obsession with cleanliness and sanitising everything, and the other’s with counting everything. Take all that out and it’d be half the length. The plot was daft, too.
A2 is rereading The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe.
Pigeon Pair
A couple of pigeons looking down on us from a distance. January 2025 was the coldest, wettest and least sunny January on our records and the second coldest month of all time, day and night, beaten only by December 2010.
A2 is reading South of the Border, West of the Sun* by Haruki Murakami. Boy meets girl and so on.
Another Beak in the Wall
Troglodytes troglodytes (so good…) aka a wren. We have never photographed one before, or even knowingly seen one. It was bouncing around like a little brown ball, occasionally stopping to search for critters in cracks. And here’s a nice song:
…well, not so nice for the poor old wren.
A1 is rereading A Snowball in Hell by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is rereading The Unlucky Lottery by Hakkan Nesser.
The Goldfinch
Carduelis carduelis; so good they named it twice. Haven’t photographed one for years but A2 spotted this one in a distant tree far, far away.
A1 is rereading A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away by Christopher Brookmyre, in which we learn its psychopathic terrorist loathes The Smiths. As does A1 🙂
A2 is rereading Borkmann’s Point by Hakan Nesser.
SAD
It’s Squirrel Appreciation Day: time to admire the thieving vandals that dig up our vegetables and eat our fruit.
A1 is rereading Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre. A2 is rereading The weeping Girl by Hakan Nesser
Another Starling
A beautiful sleek iridescent specimen this time.
A2 is rereading Woman with a Birthmark by Hakan Nesser.
Critter of the Day: Sturnus vulgaris
A starling all puffed up against the cold. It’s still snowy and icy.
A1 is reading Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway. A Le Carré novel by Le Carré junior, which competently plugged a gap in Smiley’s story in a suitably complicated fashion.
Critter of the Day: Turdus merula
Not a very pretty name for this handsome blackbird.
We had pasta, parkin and delicious Ethiopian coffee for our family lunch and scored 11.5 for the last quiz of the year, bringing our average to 10.2268518518519, a step down from last year’s 10.2756346153846.
A1 is reading Nobody’s Hero by MW Craven, another violent and thrilling outing for Ben Koenig; thanks, A2! — who is reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey (thx A1); 24 hours on the International Space Station watching the drama of the cosmorama, incorporating 16 days of the sun burnishing the oceans and 16 nights of lights fringing the coastlines while the astro/cosmonauts on board divulge a bit of backstory and have high-flown thoughts about the geography and meteorology of their home planet and a typhoon winds up over the Philippines. A short but engaging read.
Bird in a Bush
A blackbird eyeing us through the window on a misty morning.
A2 is rereading The Chalk Circle Man* by Fred Vargas.
Get well soon Gez.
Bottoms Up
Storm Darragh is raging outside but our rain gauge is blocked and serving as a useful drinking source for the birds.
The family braved the storm for our family dinner of stroggers and sticky toffee pudding and we scored 11.5 on the GSQ. Yay us!
A2 is rereading The Readymade Thief* by Augustus Rose.
Pigeon
When there is nothing else to look at the pigeons are always there, watching everything.
A1 is reading Death on the Thames* by Alan Johnson, which was relentlessly average. A2 is reading Elaine* by Will Self; Will’s memoir of his mum as a furious, frustrated, flirtatious fifties housewife (oh God, let’s never go back to those days!).
Critter of the Day: Sturnus vulgaris
A starling amid the red leaves and mostly melted snow.
A1 is rereading the enormous and erudite Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It occurred to A1 on this reread that there is a possibility that Fraa Jad maps to Enoch Root, in some sense. But it appears I’m not the first to notice this (see ‘Speculation’ at bottom of page).
A2 is rereading A Climate of Fear by Fred Vargas.