Manic tits and time out

After a hellish week at work, far too little sleep and a few hours breaking my back in the garden, I decided a relaxing session with the Nikon was called for, so about 4pm I headed off to the sanctuary of the wood armed with my new Manfrotto travel tripod... determined to get in some practice before Zambia.
I was slumped on the kitchen side in the Yardarm lazily watching Forrest dash back and forth stashing peanuts in the roof when Tracey arrived... it seems she cannot stay away either. The place just has such a beautiful feel about it at the moment - everything green and clean, fresh and floral; you can't help but relax and chill out.
A couple of beers by the fire and the light was still filtering through the trees so we decided it wasn't quite wine o'clock - time for food instead. I emptied a sachet of pasta mugshot into a bowl and looked at it thinking "that just isn't going to cut it" so I emptied in another.... turns out one is more than enough, but of course the greedy pig that I am woofed the lot down along with 2 slices of bread and sat stuffed and uncomfortable for the remainder of the evening. Tracey on the other hand slung an open can of hotdog sausages on the fire and couldn't wait for them to even heat up before shoving three in a bap and woofing hers down to. When we finally found room for chocolate we headed into the Yardarm only to discover Forrest was also on a Saturday night binge and had eaten almost an entire pack of chocolate-coated raisins. Fatty Forrest left not a single raisin in the bag.

sweet chesnut

Owls flew over calling loudly, and a bee got trapped inside the oven, his buzz echoing round the dome making it sound like a humming fridge.
I actually had a really good night's sleep - nice and warm, not too much noise (even the woodpecker gave us a lie in this week), and after a quick breakfast and 3 cups of tea, we ambled over to the stream, east of the junction and spent an hour clearing the last rhodie in a particularly tangled and bramble-choked patch on the bank.

crane-fly snack

It seems my clumsy days are not behind me this week either.... I went to give a rhodie stump a good whack with the heel of my boot to loosen it, only to discover it was already dead and so it put up absolutely no fight causing my foot to plough straight through the stump and collide with my other foot instead. A full force heel kick to the ankle bone you're standing on hurts about the same as a whack to the bridge of the nose that's so hard it makes your nose fizz. Took my breath away for a moment. However, we managed to get the worst of the patch cleared and headed back down to the Yardarm for a bit of photography practise.

What better subjects than the pair of Great tits nesting in the box by the campfire. They were back and forth every 20-30 seconds or so, feeding the noisy chicks inside and removing poo bags every 3rd or 4th visit.. nice. We know they hatched at least 17 days ago but it could be more and since they fledge somewhere between 18 and 21 days, we figure it could be any day now. That said, the sound of practise wing-flapping was only heard once inside the box when the parents were both out, so it may still be a few days away.

200 pictures of tits taken going in, coming out, going in, coming out.... and I only manage to keep three! They are so fast. It was good practise though and got us both used to the weight of our lenses and eventually we got into the rhythm of their visits and were able to recognise the patterns of their behaviour - so here's a pair of great tits doing an outstanding job of feeding their young - both of them at it from dawn to dusk.
Ps: we think there are Stock dove's nesting in the Tawny owl box!