Closet 'Twitcher'

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

'Twitcher' - 4. A bird-watcher whose main aim is to collect sightings of rare birds.

Hello my name is Jodie and I'm a bird watcher. I'm not quite a twitcher but I think I'm on the way. I have a bird feeder suction-capped to one of my bedroom windows, a peanut feeder tied to the window below it, two seed/fat balls tied to the other window and several fat twigs stuck in my window boxes for the visiting birds to sit on as they munch away at the offered bountiful harvest.

I have visiting (don't laugh - these are their proper names) blue tits, (nice photo of one of the locals here), coaltits, , and great tits. These three species have been visiting since last year. A few weeks ago a red robin and his lady friend showed up to seranade us and polish off large quantities of fat balls, and two days ago came along my very first male and female chaffinches. I was so excited I called Stu to tell him. He feigned the appropriate level of excitement, nice man that he is.

Other recent visitors are two heavyweight woodpigeons (my poor flattened parsley) and a mouse with the fattest rear end I've ever seen. I startled him at dusk prompting him to drop the sunflower seed he'd been contentedly munching and attempt a speedy escape. Only, his butt was so big he got stuck trying to squeeze between the window and the window box. After a few seconds of vigourous struggle (while I admired the sheen of his coat and marvelled at the size of his butt) he popped through and scurried off along the wall. The vertical wall with no pipes or anything other than big gaps between the bricks to cling to. Spider-mouse, spider-mouse, does what every spider, er, can.

So that's my wildlife tally from the bedroom windows of our first floor flat. Oh, we did have a snail show up. I pondered how long it would have taken him to climb all the way up to to the window boxes before sending him all the way back down again. I'll look out for him next month.

Website updated - new pics of 'Weird and wonderful London'

There are some technically competent people who have integrated their blog into their website. I'm not one of them.

So if you'd like to see three new pics of weird and wonderful London click here to go to my website. A Bounty Hunter and evil Jedi from Star Wars appear in the same display window as Catholic/religious merchandise. Well they do say that Jedi is a religion...

Sight of the week

Waiting at the bus stop after trying to decide which of the 5 types of cough syrup was right for me (sore throat + tickly cough? sore throat + expectorant + dry cough? sore throat + chesty cough? bronchial cough? tickly + dry cough? But what if my cough doesn't fit into one category??) I encountered my 'sight of the week'.

Seen: one male dwarf on flip-open mobile barking authorative orders at unknown individual while walking slowly towards bus stop on Kilburn High Road. Said dwarf dressed in Saville-row-esque very sharp tailored three-piece dark suit, black wool full-length overcoat (looked Italian), carried a mini black leather briefcase (very classy and expensive looking), wore scuffed black shoes (kind of ruined the rest of the look) and topped off everything with the most amazing oiled immoving coiff of black wavy hair I have ever seen on a man. It positively gleamed and did not move an inch in the howling wind.

Said expensively dressed short man continued ambling and barking until within 2 metres of me, at which point he trod unintentionally on a discarded lip balm which flipped into the air and tinkled back to the pavement again. Stop. Look. Stop talking. Lift foot and tread on the lip balm again. Flip-tinkle. And again. Flip-tinkle. And again. He ended his phone conversation, turned and proceeded to flip-tinkle away from the bus stop down the street.

Aaah the diversity of a big city. Flip-tinkle.