Tag: bird table

For the birds

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One camera, one tripod, one bird table. And a remotely controlled shutter.

Here’s Mrs Cape Weaver laying into her husband, givin’ ‘im what for innit, after he came back late again from the ‘Bird in the Bush’ pub down the road.

It’s not good enuff, Barry! You’re neva ‘ome! Messin’ abart wiv all those chicks darn the pub! Some of them are ‘ardly out of the egg! Wot abart your family, Barry? Wot abart our children avian offspring? And where on erf did I get this terrible cockney accent from when I’m a weaver bird from Sarf Africa?

Note the world-weary expression of the male Cape Sparrow on the left. He’s seen it all before from his missus. But that was back in the bad old days when he too had an alcohol addiction problem. Thanks to an online (the line in question being the telephone wire to the house next door) support group, he’s been clean for over a year now, follows a healthy, seed-based diet (plenty of omega-3’s, proteins, fibre) and only drinks water. Sadly, it was all too late for his marriage, and Mrs Cape Sparrow moved in with a Speckled Mousebird [I have no idea how this would actually work] despite his (now fulfilled) promises to change.

Such is (bird) life in the Limestone Fynbos of Cape Agulhas.
Like a giant bush-based soap opera.

More bird-table antics and pics of the recent solar eclipse here.

The bird table incident

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The weekend started well. I had a bit of stuff to do in the lab on Saturday morning, so I went and did it and then dragged the beagle for a moderate 5km around the neighbourhood. By that time, Mrs 6000 had come home from the important shopping she had been doing, announced that she felt like death (to be honest, she didn’t look like Death – no hooded cloak, no scythe) and went to bed.

We haven’t seen her since.

Still, while the cat is horrendously viral upstairs, the mice will do their own thing, and yesterday’s own thing was climbing trees on the school field and having very good ribs, very good burgers and very average chili poppers from Eat Out The Box. Today, with little or no improvement in the condition of the Matriarch, we hit the Waterfront for Cave Golf (more on that sometime soon), a quick Aquarium visit, and then Woodies burgers and Sushi Hut sushi.

Later, there was beagle bathing and some back garden tennis, which culminated with me smashing my head into a bird table fabricated from a 7kg chunk of pottery slung at an awkward height from a tree in the back garden. Awkward in that it was slung pretty much at exactly my head height. The obvious disadvantage to this set up was evident this afternoon as I saw stars, planets, comets and myriad other heavenly bodies as I fell to the floor wondering who exactly I was, and cursing the idiot who put it in such a stupidly dangerous position.
The obvious advantage was that it was a really convenient height when I put it up several years ago.

And now, another evening alone, contemplating a week ahead full of deadlines (it’s coming, Sam) and with just the beagle and a brandy for company.

And a headache, the likes of which I haven’t known since I can’t remember when.

 

In fact, I can’t remember much right now.