Sex and violence.

This was the image last year. We have a camera in a nest box which is fed in to my t.v. Clever stuff ey?
These are blue tit eggs. Which all hatched succesfully in 2009.

This year it has been a battle royal between the blue tit who built his nest, again in the box, and a tree sparrow. Time after time the blue tit zoomed in and chased away the tree sparrow. Then after viewing the blue tit making a lovely nest for his chosen one, he disappeared. Next time I checked there was a tree sparrow in there sitting on a great pile of eggs. The tree sparrows also have the other nest box in this area and a 'terrace' of nest boxes we put up for house sparrows who prefer to all nest together. Now somewhere I have read that tree sparrows are something of a rarity, well not round here.
So thats the violence bit. The sex bit is that it becomes increasingly embarrassing to look out of the window as every bird around is 'at it'. Even our two ducks who are both female......

We have at the moment a lot of goldfinches, I think a flock of them is called a charm, isn't that nice? The prettiest of our native birds I think. Greenfinches, Great Tits - we think they are nesting in the trees that line the drive and have convenient holes - Wood pigeons, now they really are the sex gods, branches crashing down, leaves everywhere and a lot of cooing. Blackbirds singing being territorial. Its all happening here.

On the Agricultural front Mike has been and gone and collected some more carrots. We already have freezer full of carrot soup in many variations and carrot cake. Any ideas what else you can do with carrots?

The next lot of carrots is being prepared for. Specially designed tractors trawling the ground for rocks and stones. As they drone up the sloping fields I remind Mike that just about there is our water pipe......

On the hillside across the valley the oil seed rape is blooming yellow and elsewhere around us green shoots of barley totally transform our view and all memories of snow are forgotten.

Well not quite - the latest weather forecast is that in a few days time we just might have some MORE. BUM.