Tag Archives: birds

Moving Gift

Our next-door neighbours were great bird lovers and would feed their feathered friends in the garden each day.   They had sparrows nesting in the eaves of their roof, a bird table in the garden and a bird house on the side of their garage where blue tits would raise their young in safety.  Every bird was welcome, apart from the heron that emptied the fish from their pond!

Bird collageAll photos taken from my back garden

When they announced they were moving I wanted to make them a gift that would be both useful and personalised, so I decided to mosaic a blue tit on a garden planter.

Blue tit planter

We’re going to miss them very much but we’re happy that they’re enjoying their new home and a more peaceful way of life.

 

Queuing for food

I’m not ignoring the dreadful situation people all over the world are experiencing at the moment, I just think it’s important to have a little escapism.  Before we went into isolation a week ago, I took lots of photos in our local park and I thought it would be nice to share them with you.

Please keep safe and well, stay indoors and look out your windows.  Spring is here and there’s so much to see, albeit from the safety of our homes.

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In the Blue corner

A couple of years ago I bought two wooden garden chairs on Ebay.  One wasn’t very sturdy and didn’t survive the winter; the other was in good condition and has been sitting in my workshop waiting to be painted.  So, I had the chair and I had the paint,  I just needed to get on with it.

After lots and lots of rubbing down and several coats of paint it’s now brightening up a shady corner.

Blue Chair 2

I also had some material left over from making new curtains for our camper, so I made a cushion cover too. Such a good quality fabric from Ikea and I love the birds design too.

cushion zip

It’s such a comfy chair and I love the style.

Cushion

Blue Chair

I got the blue bird for a knockdown price because the beak had broken off.  It was a clean break and glued together perfectly.   I’m really happy with this little corner of my garden.

The Birds

What could have been a day spent trundling backwards and forwards along the motorway turned out to be a lovely sunny day on the South Downs.

Last Monday one of our vehicles needed to go in for work, so rather than returning home after drop off we headed towards the South coast and ended up at Ditchling Beacon, just 7 miles outside of Brighton, but a world away from the busy seaside resort.

Gulls on field

Driving along towards the hill one of the fields was being ploughed and hundreds of birds were flying around the tractor and feasting on an early lunch in the freshly turned earth.  It was like a scene from the Hitchcock film “The Birds”.   We pulled over and I jumped out with my camera and carefully negotiated the rutted bank to try and get a photograph …….

Tractor

Unbeknown to me, as I was carefully crossing the wide bank to reach the field all the birds had decided to fly off to the field behind me, so I just got a picture of a tractor.  I think if you look closely that might be a bird in the top right hand corner!

Gate

From the top of  Ditchling Beacon there are 360° views over the surrounding countryside.

Walker

Row of trees

Sheep

Birdies

We took a long walk along the South Downs and although it was sunny, it was incredibly windy and we were glad to be able to put the kettle on when we got back to the Camper.

On the way back to the garage we stopped off at Tilgate Park which is also a beautiful place to spend an afternoon.

Tilgate Park lake

Tilgate Park trees