Baby Pictures

or Finders Keepers According to Baby Robins

I must be dreaming! This looks like a box of live worms!

Huh? What’s this kid doing standing on the worms? (thinks the Dunnock)

And they were here just like this, and I was the first one to find them!

OK, I’m cool with that, says Baby No. 2. But one question: how are you going to eat them if you are standing on them? I guess I got a little carried away, I found them all by myself you know, says Baby No. 1

Hey! I was standing on that! say Baby No. 1. Finders Keepers, says Baby No. 2

Birdy News from the Summer

OK, a bit sickly, but what pictures of someone else’s babies aren’t? We saw an intriguing movie this summer, Frances Ha, in which the eponymous character explains that people with kids are just as selfish, maybe even more so, as when they had none at all. After all, they are now putting all their energies into mini versions of themselves. The baby robins are not mini versions of us, of course, but of our former robin overlord, which is why we called them Fuzzy Grandkids (and if you don’t know who Fuzz is, where have you been?).

They weren’t the only mini versions we were saddled with this summer. It seems that every bird parent in creation dumped their progeny on us (we are still dealing with quarrelsome blackbird teenagers). The most attention seeking were the baby and teenage magpies. Magpies are public enemies in the UK according to every soft-hearted and -headed supposed lover of nature (don’t sugar coat it, Linda), but if anyone could see the extreme forbearance displayed by the parents of the screechy teradactyls they had produced they would have a modicum of respect. Our resident pair had produced three, and you had to laugh at these big, gawky babies pretending they couldn’t pick up food off the ground and screeching right into their parents faces to be fed.  We couldn’t get any good pictures of this (big surprise), but some excellent photos of these babies and other summer babies can be found at MyNewRedCamera

We spent most of August  freeing the unruly teenagers of our various nesting birds from the confines of the conservatory.  They had figured out that the worms and other treats came from there.  So, when the door was open and no one was around they popped inside to make off with the goods themselves.  But, of course, it ended in baby tears when we had to capture them and set them free.

Odds and Ends

We’ve just had a falconry center installed in our vicinity. Can’t wait to see the birds up close.

Just read in Private Eye about the number of dirty birdy government employees trying to access smut on the interweb while at work.  I was one of the guilty ones!  The major reason I was so remiss with this blog this summer was because I was working a rather intense government project. All boastful and proud, I tried to show one of my co-workers this blog only to have it blocked for objectionable content.  And guess which page I was trying to access–the Dunnock sex page! To be fair, Private Eye did say that it’s most likely those birdies weren’t so dirty trying to access smut; it’s those evil government filters. Not guilty, your honor, with the NSA as my witness….