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Closer to Nature – Meet the Robins

By Mum's the Word on May 16, 2013 in Closer to Nature

Something very exciting has been happening this week…we’ve just found out we’ve got babies! Baby robins, that is! Let me set the scene…

A few weeks ago, I was on the phone (probably to my Mum) and I was gazing out of our patio doors when I noticed a robin, standing INSIDE my garden shed.

“No”, I thought, “I must be hallucinating…” (like that was a FAR more reasonable explanation)

I put the thought out of my head until last week, Husband proclaimed “A robin just flew into our shed!”

“Aha!”, I thought, glad not to have been in the early stages of a psychotic break.

So, we’ve been watching two robins flying in and out of the shed for a couple of weeks, watching them frantically searching for food, knowing that there must be babies in there and on Monday, Husband managed to sneakily get this snap through the window:

Isn’t he a beauty? We’ve learned that robins don’t get their red breast until they reach maturity, although you can see the beginnings of orangey patched on this little dudes’ chest. He’s not alone either, we’re pretty sure there are two babies in there as we’ve seen them hopping around together. Mr. and Mrs. Robin work tirelessly to feed their young, we’ve sat and watched them for whole afternoons, zooming in and out, hopping through the hole above the shed door with worms and berries in their beaks.

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On Monday, Husband and I decided that we’d help our lodgers along in their daily toil to feed their young and we bought a variety of bird food, which we’ve secreted in various locations around the garden. Suet pellets, mealworms, soaked raisins and robin museli have gone down a treat! We didn’t want to put a bird table up, as we’ve heard that they attract cats as we had to come up with some other, impromptu ways of dispensing the food. Husband came up with the great idea of getting a carton from a dozen eggs and cutting it into sections, which we then taped on windowsills and outside the shed, and we even hid one in our trough of strawberries!

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed observing the robins and getting a little bit closer to nature (did you see what I did there?!) and we’ll be sad when our babies fly the nest, something that we think isn’t far off, given the size of them. We’d love to see your nature photos too, so please get involved by linking up any recent nature-related posts and you can even stick one of our badges on there too, if you like. (code in sidebar)

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Closer to Nature

By Mum's the Word on November 1, 2012 in Closer to Nature

I’ve not done a Closer to Nature post for ages, mostly because I’ve not been near much nature lately! Between the daily school runs, the nights drawing in and the colder weather, being outside has not been high on my list of priorities!

It’s been Half Term here this week and typically, Sausage has been poorly for most of it, which is a real bummer, but today she’s feeling a bit better so we decided to blow some of the cobwebs away and go for a walk along the beach. As we approached the seafront, the black clouds were gathering and the wind was whipping around, but we still managed half an hour of rambling around.

The sky was a real mix of different colours and while one part was black and foreboding, to the other side of me there was blue sky and sunshine! I remembered that I now have a panoramic function on my iPhone so I decided to try and capture it all – and I think it came out quite well! (click to enlarge)

If you’ve taken any vaguely nature related snaps in the last month or so, stick them in a post and link them up below. There’s badge code in the sidebar that you can grab too, if you like!

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on July 22, 2012 in Photos, Silent Sunday

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on June 10, 2012 in Silent Sunday

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Wordless Wednesday

By Mum's the Word on May 2, 2012 in Wordless Wednesday

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on March 4, 2012 in Photos, Silent Sunday

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on February 26, 2012 in Silent Sunday

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on February 5, 2012 in Photos, Silent Sunday

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on January 1, 2012 in Photos, Silent Sunday

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The Gallery – Faces

By Mum's the Word on October 27, 2011 in The Gallery

I haven’t done a Gallery post in a while; in fact, I haven’t done a blog post in a while, at least not one which required me to commit my own words to a page. Those of you who know me will know that my family lost a member last week, my stepmum Lorraine. Lorraine had been battling cancer, melanoma to be precise. She was 42 when she died, in fact it had been her 42nd birthday just ten days earlier, which she’d spent in hospital.

I still can’t believe she’s gone. When I think of my Dad, I think of them as a pair – Dad and Lorraine, it just trips off of the tongue. But sadly, so fucking sadly, my father is now just ‘Dad’. I cannot even begin to tell you all of the emotions that have gone through me in the last two weeks, I’m utterly, utterly devastated, as is Husband and of course the rest of the family. Unfair just does not even begin to cover it. I’m not quite able to write about this in the way I’d like to, not able to do Lorraine justice with my words as I still feel largely in shock.

A few days ago, I was going through my emails and I found some pictures of Sausage that I’d emailed to my Dad a couple of years ago and one pictures stopped me in my tracks.

It’s a picture of Lorraine holding Sausage.

You can’t see Lorraine’s face, only Sausage’s, but the look on my infant daughter’s face says everything you need to know about how she felt about Lorraine. Indeed, how we all felt about her.

I hope, in time, that I’m better able to write something that does justice to the woman who touched our lives and whom we already miss so much. But for now, I’ll let this picture and Sausage’s face do the talking.