Hello 2019

New Year

It was New Year once more and January was cold, with the usual frost and clear days but more often than not, just damp and cold.

Jack Frost has been painting his patterns on my car

In February it snowed.

And snowed

And snowed,

 the deepest snow I have seen since for many years.

But signs of spring came and the snow went away.

Mistletoe

One of the odd things I have noticed about the Gloucestershire area is the predominance of mistletoe. This becomes clear during the winter months because mistletoe is an evergreen whilst the host tree is deciduous and so loses its leaves in winter.  You can then see all the mistletoe and in and around Gloucestershire many trees are infested with the parasite plant. Many more than I have ever seen in other English counties.

This is typical of the tree lined streets of Cheltenham, where the trees are festooned with clumps of mistletoe

Spring

In March, spring was well underway and we took a stroll along by the canal in Hungerford, a small town not to far from us.

The canal at Hungerford

You sometimes see episodes of BBC's  Bargain Hunt being filmed in the Hungerford Arcade.

This a wonderful place to browse since it is a host of nooks and crannies filled with all kinds of bric a brac, old books and genuine antiques.

In April, not much happened, but spring started to bloom some more and life went on as normal.
Our estate seems to have more cats than houses.The garden fences around our houses act as a kind of highway for cats and you will often see a cat or two travelling via fence.  Some years back, we used to have a bird feeder and we had lots of wild birds visit our garden, but year by year more families seemed to acquire a kitten that then grew up and now there are a host felines all around us.  After a few years we found the garden became a magnet for cats and the birds started to stay away, so we got rid of the bird feeder but still have the bird table.  This is now made use of for another purpose by our next door neighbor's cat.

The cat highway in use

It is the habit of our neighbor's cat to sit on this fence post and survey the world.  As a kitten it was a secure perch, but as she grew the post must have seemed to have shrunk and now does not have quite enough room for all four paws any more.  So she sits up there with one paw held in front of her whilst she decides where to go.

Slimbridge

In May, we went to the Wetlands at Slimbridge once again  and saw a lot more birds than the last time we visited.  At that time of year only the winter birds were there but in the spring you see the mother birds with their young and so a lot of chicks / ducklings / goslings, and whatever other strange names young birds have, were around for several different species of birds.

Mother Goose

 The Cranes were more cooperative on this visit and we saw a family with one rather larger chick than some of the other bird families.

A family of cranes

Cranes in flight over some avocets

Whilst we were eating lunch, this crow came and started to beg for food.  You are not supposed to encourage them, but this particular fellow was so tame that I succumbed and gave him a few bits from my sandwich.

Whilst we were there, we were lucky to see a pair of Kingfishers and as a personal first, I was able to get some reasonable pictures and not just a flash of blue.

Female Kingfisher with a fish

We wandered all afternoon seeing more birds and then went to the Tudor Arms for a meal.  The pub is by a swing bridge across the Gloucester and Sharpness canal on the only road in and out of Slimbridge.

An avocet taking off

Dive, dive, dive!

Formation flying 

This one seems to be suffering from a fit of shyness, but was about to dive

Mother goose keeping her goslings warm

A swan in flight

This canal links the upper reaches of the River Severn with the tidal reaches at Sharpness.  After dinner, we walked along by the canal for a while, with me looking at the boats and after a short stroll, we returned home after an interesting day.

Not the usual canal boat, but this canal leads to the sea and a lot of seagoing vessels come up to Gloucester along this waterway.