Stonechats

Partner-who-loves-tea and I went on a lighthouse photographing expedition the other day and in the process parked up alongside some Stonechats (Saxicola torquata) who were playing in the reeds and on top of a stone right in front of the car.

Unfortunately the windscreen was not as clean as I thought and the camera speed was slow so all the photos turned out quite poorly with the exception of the one below which was taken when one of them flew to the side of the car and I could lower the window.

Stonechats are robin sized birds. In spring, males have striking black heads with white around the side of their neck, orange-red breasts and a mottled brown back. Females lack the male's black head, but have brown backs and an orange tinge to their chests. They breed in western and southern parts of the UK, but disperse more widely in winter.  There are an estimated 59,000 breeding pairs in the UK.

A similar bird is the Whinchat but it can be easily distinguished by the white eye stripe which is lacking in the Stonechat.

Stonechats are frequently seen flicking their wings while perched, often doing so on the tops of low bushes or tall grasses and reeds. As the name suggests, the Stonechat utters a sharp loud call that sounds like two stones being tapped together.   You can hear its call here.  (There are lots of other sites with the sound of Stonechats on but most of them have the bird's song rather than the stone tapping call.)

I hadn't seen a Stonechat on the Wirral peninsula before but had often seen them in the Lake District in my fell-walking days.  These are a couple of long-distance shots from the 1960s.

All you need...

Big Harry Unknown

Sometimes one comes across blogs which merit a far greater number of readers than they appear to have.  One such that I stumbled across in 2011 was Kay, the Georgia Girl with an English Heart.   I mentioned Kay’s blog on mine and as a result a few new readers were born.  Nowadays she has dozens and dozens and regularly gets over 30 comments on her postings.   I would love to see the same reaction to Fenifur’s blog about names -

Big HarryUnknown (Unusual, real historical names and the People who owned them).

The research that goes into Fenifur’s posts is considerable and I suspect that she is a bit like me in that the research is a reward in itself.  Nevertheless, it is a real shame that there seem to be so few readers who have found her blog and comment on it.  Fenifur describes herself as a twenty-something with ‘too many interests and little direction.  I Love Writing, Cooking, Archaeology, History, Geneaology, The Ocean, Walking, Waterfalls, Cornwall (especially the north coast) Looking through 18thC Newspapers for weird stories, Art, Reading, Animals, Postcrossing and Daydreaming, usually when I'm supposed to be concentrating on something important.’  I hadn’t realised the Postcrossing connection until I was writing this post!   Fenifur has recently been ill so please excused her if she doesn’t reply instantly to comments.

She explains here what her blog is all about.

 Among the wonderful names she has researched are Pleasure Butler, Repentance Butter, Cross Crozier, Photo Gilbert Scales which can all be found in her August 2013postings.

Fenifur also has another blog, The Devonian Period, here.

When cereal packets were exciting...

Do you remember the days when cereal packets had goodies in them?  Things like plastic toys and little gadgets, stickers and cards.  I presume the danger of the cereal manufacturers being sued if a child should manage to swallow one is the reason they don't exist any more.  Gone are the incentives to push children into asking Mum or Dad to get a particular cereal.

Here are a few you might recall.

Football stickers

Clip clop horses

Cowboys and indians

Toy soldiers

Magic straws

A water squirting ring

The cast of the Magic Roundabout came, I think, with Ricicles.  How many can you name?  (Answer at the bottom)

Sometimes there were competitions and here is one Partner-who-loves-tea would have loved to win -

A weekend with Liverpool and England footballer Kevin Keegan.  But I don't think playing football with him would have been her first priority....

My all-time favourite was this little submarine that you filled with bi-carbonate of soda to propel it along in the bath.  It gave me many hours of fun.

Magic Roundabout cast -
Back row - Zebedee, Mr Rusty, Florence, Mr McHenry
 Front Row - Brian, Ermintrude, Dylan, Dougal

Grumpy Dougal (loosely based on Tony Hancock) was my favourite character with Zebedee a close second. In most episodes Zebedee appeared, usually summoned by Florence, with a loud "boing" sound, and he usually closed the show with the phrase "Time for bed".

Post boxes

I collect post boxes.  No, not full size one but models.  I think there are a couple in the loft and we also have a bird box in the shape of one and a tea/coffee pot.

But apart from those the rest are on a couple of shelves in the study.

Note the American one on the top shelf - that was courtesy of Friend-uber-special as were the mug and coffee/tea pot.  Family members have given me some of the others.