Heel toe, heel toe !

(Will Harlow)

Purple blue / mauve wisteria flowers with a happy bumblebee in the centre having breakfast.

Bonjour toots. ☕

Busy morning so I'll catch up with everyone's days later. Hope your Thursday goes well. 🌷

The first notes of the dawn chorus often belong to the Robin.

Clear and soulful, singing even before the first glimmer of light.

Have you heard a Robin greeting the morning? 😍

#DawnChorusClub

Respect!

I can't stand her.

Unfortunately, the unveiling of Starmer's behaviour relating to the Robbins & Doyle 'stuff' has left me disliking him equally. An exemplary career down the drain, wiped out, because of an appointment anyone with even half a brain must have told Starmer was extremely unwise. Tit.

I hadn't read that he was MIA.

I can imagine how delighted you are with his return. 😺

How is your back?

I should I ask later this afternoon? 😁

Country diary: A beekeeper’s lament – ‘Why did none of my bees survive winter?’ | Tom Allan St Mabyn, Cornwall: Many apiarists opened their hives this spring to find hardly any sign of life. In Richard’s case, he found nothing at all

The worrying disappearance of honeybee colonies in today's @theguardian.com country diary by @tomallanwriter.bsky.social.

#countrydiary #naturewriting

Are the women back there somewhere? Yes, I think I see them.

TwatMan.

But I see it's all over now and you can relaaaaax. 🍷

If you want to look at a different web-based email provider, have a look at GMX.

I use Firefox. It's lost some ground in the popularity stakes over recent times but I've used it for at least 20 years and it's reliable and I pretty much trust it.

Liked but don't like. 🤨

Am not surprised tho.

If you're dressed for it, no better sort of morning. Keeps the 'lightweights' away! 😄

Can't have enough bookcases... and that's a nice specimen. 😎

🥰

Wow. That's remarkable and very lovely. The snowdrops... 😍

Brilliant. And will keep on top of all that shedding hair...

<hard look across the room at Rufus-Kitten> 🤨

Gorjus. 🤩

Two large lilac trees - one white, one, well, lilac - in full bloom under a blue, cloudless sky.

Even in the Cantal, spring seems to be thoroughly underway now.

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (1914 – 1944) was a British agent in France in the Second World War who served in the Special Operations Executive. She became the first female wireless operator to be sent from the UK into occupied France to aid the French Resistance during WW2. #CelebratingWomen

😁

Sketch of a female Cooper's Hawk made with a bic pen.

Sketch of a female Cooper's Hawk

Bic pen on paper
5x6

#art #birds #nature #sciart

I used to like their free magazine but I think they dropped that some years ago.

'Ours' were headquartered in the woodshed - usually at least 6 stere (cu metres) of wood in there so good to set up nests and an easy, mainly covered run to the chicken pen. But they've simply gone. 🤷‍♀️ Rufus catches varieties of mice (which we lob up to the barn owls' landing board!) but no rats.

Ah, it's a Waitrose special...

Oh gods, the rats. 🤦 Normally not a problem as, until last spring, we had a cat and elderly though Bertie was, he seemed to be an excellent deterrent. But last summer / autumn they were a real problem. So we got Rufus-Kitten (not a kitten, a 7kg, 7 year-old thug) and we've not seen one since.

I suspect I will have to rely on Merlin to identify one for me. I do occasionally hear bird song I don't recognise - last year it was a pair of yellowhammers in a hedgerow at the top of the drive. The farmer who owns the land around us is bio so we get plenty of quality insects.

I love jackdaws... such presence and so intelligent. 😍

Having just checked, they are seen in this part of Normandy (and particularly on the Channel Islands) so something for me to watch out for. 🤞