Monday, January 11, 2010

Attack of the squirrels

Our bird feeders hanging in the trees have been well frequented, mainly by blue and great-tits. Until today that is. The squirrels found them!

The first casualty was my Heath-Robinson bird table, basically a toffee tin lid suspended on boot laces. It wasn’t strong enough to withstand a hungry squirrel landing on it!
All the food cleared up off the ground, they then started on the fat balls and peanut bag.

In half an hour it was all over, the poor birds hanging around looking miserable.

I didn’t really begrudge the rodents, they must get hungry too in this weather.
I rehung the feeder and put more fat balls and peanuts up. Hopefully the birds will find them before the squirrels trash them again!

It’s been a bit milder, getting above zero during daylight hours. I checked, and we’ve still got 4” of ice around the stern. I guess we’ll be going no-where soon. The forecast indicates this relatively warm spell will last all week, so with a bit of luck we may make it back to Anderton at the weekend. Here’s hoping, we’ll be getting short of solid fuel by then.

I’ve been plodding up and down the towpath carrying water from and full loo cassettes to the facilities, but I don’t think I could manage 25Kg bags of Excel the mile from Uplands. I’ve got a trolley/sack barrow type of thing, but it’s a pretty lightweight bit of kit and I don’t think it’d survive the bumpy towpath.

If you, like me, are getting a bit fed up with the snow there’s a bit of light relief on Dot and Derek’s Gypsy Rover blog. Made me smile, anyway.

Locks 0, miles 0.

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