Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all

Iits now the beginning of a New Year and time I did something about this Blog site.  Over the next week or two I am going to totally update all the family information,  art work and several other bits and pieces.  If you have written to me in the last 6 months and I so far haven’t done anything about it be patient and I will get to you – particularly the genealogy stuff.   I have been incredable busy and this site just got pushed to the bottom of the list.

Fist of all just a word about names.  In my last post I told you about the Gobby family – a family of little brown birds who visit my garden.  If any of my readers have the name of Gobby please accept my apologies.  In my part of the world gobby means always talking, often saying the wrong things.  Sometimes we say that a person has a ‘big mouth’ meaning the same thing as gobby.   Yakety yak means constant chatter like small children – noisy and talkative.  Gutzy or gutsy means greedy, always eating.

Anyway, this family continues to grow and still provide much entertainment.  They seem to fight a lot making up the ‘pecking order’ and who gets fed first.

Now I am being visited by what looks like someone’s pet rabbits.  A neighbour tells me that they are probably living wild and have had babies!  There is a lovely grey one and today I saw a black one.   Don’t seem to be aware of my cat though several weeks ago she did bring in a very small rabbit – unusual for her.  It wasn’t dead but whether it survived the fright or not I don’t know.

Just outside my kitchen window I have placed several bird feeders and coconut feeders.  They hang from a hedge which goes along the side of my garden.  There are lots of different garden birds visit daily; sparrows, bluetits, great tits, robins, blackbirds and of course the Brown birds.  I have great difficulty in identifying all the small brown birds some being female and some being both sexes of some species.  Anyway I want to tell you about the Gobby family.  There is Patience (the mother) Helper (the father ) and 2 chicks whom I have named Yackity-yak and Gutsy.  They live in a nest under the coping stones of my neighbour’s house and I have watched the comings and goings all year.

I watched them make take their fist flight.  There were 4 chicks at the time (I think they are still around but I can only identify the 2 I have named) and they were all poised on the roof of the building making a ferocious din.  Patience perched on the right and Helpful on the left with the chicks in between. Mum and Dad were obviously trying to encourage them to launch of the roof but all they would do was hop up and down the edge of the roof.  Finally Patience decided enough was enough and pinched each on the bum and pushed them off the roof.  Success they were now in flight.  They didn’t go far but landed on the hedge.  Patience and Helpful joined them and led them to the feeders.

Since then I have watched Patience (which must be running out) feed these fat fluffy little creatures endlessly.  Meanwhile they yahked  and squawked constantly.

Yakety-yak was the worst and is still at it though I saw that he/she has finally got the hang of getting food from the coconut shell.  Gutzy on the other hand has also learned to feed but is still chasing Patience around for a top up meal.

I have had so much fun watching this family and I am sure there will be more to come.

The tits and finches though are the bright cookies. They seem to learn faster than all the others – no messing with them when they decide to learn.

a family of pheasants who visit annually - but that's another story