The BeenThere-DoneThat Blog

We are going to Rye in Sussex again in early April and are meeting Marie, a lady from the eastern U.S.A, who is also staying in Rye at that time. This is going to be a formidable trio – Sussex watch out!

How the weather turns out remains to be seen but at that time of year we will have to be prepared for almost anything.

We are going to a different hotel this time and the hotel’s information says ‘most of our bedrooms have WIFI connection for the internet’. What’s the betting that our room isn’t one of the ‘most’?

If we do have WIFI available I shall try and add to the Blog whilst we are there.

This is going to be a trip report you cannot afford to miss.

Our house has a balcony across one end with the roof extending over the balcony. Across the balcony at ceiling height are two large cross-beams which reach from one side of the roof to the other which would provide a very nicely sheltered perch.

Below one end of these beams we noticed white bird droppings and a number of pellets (the sort that birds of prey regurgitate). This started a few months ago although we didn’t see any sign of a bird. The pellets consisted mostly of fur with some beetle bits and no bones. Nocturnal birds of prey such as owls don’t digest bones and they would normally appear in the pellets so that ruled out owls. Day flying birds of prey digest bones so that they don’t appear in the pellets and that meant our bird was probably a diurnal bird of prey. Only some diurnal birds of prey eat beetles so that narrowed the choices somewhat.

A few days ago I chanced to be in the upstairs room which gives access to the balcony when a largish bird appeared from around the side of the roof and swooped up to where the beams would be but out of my sight. Just at that point Amanda came into the room and we tried to get a look at the bird but it must have seen us because we both saw it fly away. It didn’t fly very far and settled on the roof of one of our greenhouses. We could see that it had a mouse or vole clasped in it’s left foot and it looked very much like a Kestrel. At this point it flew off out of sight.

I saw it once again a day or two later and noticed a black bar across the end of it’s tail and that, together with the speckled brown plumage identified it as a Kestrel.

So it appears that we have a Kestrel as a semi-permanent lodger which is rather nice but I bet it won’t clear up the mess on the balcony floor.

This lady likes surfing the web!

This is a ‘Garden Spider’ (Araneus diadematus) which is to be found on bushes and other vegetation in the garden especially at this time of year and they normally live for 1 – 2 years.

She is obviously a little mixed up as this particular web is on the inside of our back door and not in the garden. She was at least sensible enough to attach the web onto the the door frame and not the door as otherwise the web would be destroyed every time we opened the door.

We have another one on the inside of one of our bedroom windows.

Rather pretty don’t ya think?

We are now 3 weeks past mid-summer which means that the days are getting shorter although as there is still a little light at 10:00 PM it doesn't really notice yet.

It would be nice if we could have some – summer that is. We have now had about 6-7 weeks of unsettled weather and it has not been especially warm. The problem is that the weather is so unreliable. There has, generally, been a lot of cloud with small patches of blue sky, sometimes none, and showers. Some showers have been very very heavy and some not – some short and some long.

The weather hasn't been too bad for tourists but it has not been good for photography. I seemed to spend a lot of time in Rye just waiting for the sun to come out although on one morning we had sun all the time but at lunch time the cloud re-appeared.

We were hoping to go away at least once, possibly twice, in June but we haven't. We are hoping that we may get some warm, sunny and reliable weather before autumn but we're not banking on it.

I am going away on Friday 27th July to the North Yorkshire Moors for a week whatever the weather. Amanda won't be coming on this trip, which is disappointing, but I'm joining some other family members in some self-catering accommodation which, from my point of view, is a relatively cheap option. Because it's relatively cheap I won't feel that I've wasted money if I don't get any photographs because of the weather.

There will be plenty to do up there. There is the North York Moors Railway (steam), some quaint villages like Staithes and Robin Hood's Bay, interesting old towns like Whitby and Helmsley and the coast is an excellent place for fossil hunting.

There isn't any broadband access so no daily trip reports.

A week today, I think, I shall be meeting a young Italian gentleman who, apparently, comes over to Great Britain frequently and has already written one book about it. I'm looking forward to that.

In just over two weeks we shall be in August – come on Summer where are you?

There I was in the shower, minding my own business, when in through the slightly open window comes the queen! Not THE QUEEN, you understand, but a queen hornet.

When naked one does feel slightly more vulnerable than when fully clothed – more places available for stinging I suppose. Had it been a common wasp I would have leaped out of the shower and swatted it without a second thought. The common wasp is a bad tempered beastie and is likely to sting with very little provocation.

This, however, was not a common wasp it was a hornet. Worker hornets are big enough compared to the common wasp but queen hornets are even bigger. Luckily hornets are generally quite placid creatures and need considerable provocation before resorting to stinging.

We see quite a lot of them around the garden and are quite happy to let them go about their business but one in the bathroom isn’t really on. I know from experience that they can be shepherded around without them getting annoyed so I hopped out of the shower and, having opened the window a little more, coaxed it back outside with some gentle hand waving.

I think that we were both satisfied with that outcome.

We have some Black Mullein (Verbascum nigrum) plants in our garden which are indigenous wild flowers which have seeded naturally. They are also the food of the Mullein Moth (Cucullia verbasci) caterpillars.

With colours like this you can’t miss them can you? They do make the plant look a bit ragged as they eat quite a lot of the leaves.

Some weeks ago we had to replace the felt roof on one of our outbuildings and dumped the old felt on the ground nearby then recently we decided it was time to clear it away. However when Amanda lifted the corner of a large sheet she found this.

No it’s not a snake it’s a legless lizard known as a Slow Worm (Anguilla fragilis) and this one is a female. One of the give away features is that it blinks. Snakes do not have eyelids and therefore cannot blink.

A perfectly harmless creature and the gardener’s friend inasmuch as it eats garden pests like slugs. It does mean that, for the time being at least, the felt must remain where it is until such time that it decides to move house. At the moment it is returning to it’s felt house every day.

In a few days it will be the longest day and at present it’s getting dark around 10:30 in the evening. Although April and May provided some very nice warm sunny weather June has been, and still is, very unsettled.

On Thursday last I visited Audley End House near Saffron Walden in Essex as I mentioned in a previous post. This was just to have a quick look round to see what I could photograph when we make our ‘proper’ trip.

One interesting feature of the trip was that I used my new GPS navigation unit to get me there. You know – the sort of thing that talks to you and tells you where to go (in the nicest possible way of course). I have to say it beats having to keep stopping and looking at a map.

Anyway – back to the house. Beautiful bit of parkland and gardens and the house is rather large. If you went in the house without a guide or floor plan you’d probably starve to death before you found your way out again.

Some very impressive rooms so, as Arnold Schwarzenegger might have said, I’ll be back.