Another Week of October

 As usual the week has rushed by and now October only has one week left. I've not been far at all as  the man from the removal company brought me a big heap of boxes so I've started packing and took two more bags of all-sorts to charity shops. Plus grandchildren's toys they've grown out of are also on their way out of the house.

The buyers of my bungalow had a survey done here during the week. We never bothered in any of our umpteen moves reckoning that Col would fix anything that goes wrong and if a property has been standing for 30 or 40 years it's not likely to fall down! And once we'd done up a very, very, old house back to it's timber frame and dirt floor anything else would be easy. 

I'd never seen a surveyor in action and I couldn't believe how long it took as he went round tapping all the walls, taking photos outside of roof and inside of ceilings and switching lights on and off as well as opening,  locking and unlocking all the doors. It's a 1983 bungalow, standard construction and really not much to go wrong - I wonder how much the buyers are being charged?  

First named storm of the season arrived yesterday. Worse in the south-west of the country, but lots of rain here then another storm arriving today, this time worse up north but with more rain forecast everywhere for later.  Almost all week has been a bit gloomy although I managed to get washing more or less dry on Thursday. Hopefully this rainy spell will help fill the reservoirs and the ground water.

Good news about a detective drama returning on BBC in November -Return to Paradise which is the Australian spin-off of Death in Paradise, will be back for a 3rd series. I've never watched Beyond Paradise which is the UK spin off as it seemed a bit silly.

 Info about the NCIS Origins series also keeps popping up, but we can't get it here for free.

Have a good weekend - hope you get power back if you lost it in the South-west and hope you don't lose electric in storm Boleo if you are in the north.

The Horse Chestnut October Photo

 I'm a bit late with the October photo and the leaves are falling and the conkers have gone.

The ground underneath the tree is covered with the conker shells but not a conker to be seen. They've been taken by squirrels I guess or children although there probably aren't many children in this village.

The leaves show signs of the disease and normal autumn changes. With windy weather forecast I guess many more leaves will be on the ground after the weekend.

All the other photos of the tree through the year are HERE.

Collared Doves

 Collared Doves are much neater birds than fat pigeons and very shy so these are awful photos through the window. They nearly always visit the garden in pairs.

My bird book says they are widespread and common in suburban gardens and farming areas. But have only been a British bird since arriving from south-east Europe in the 1950s. The thing to spot to know it's a collared dove is the black half collar around the neck. These are young birds as they lack the dark collar.

Turtle Doves are completely different and only summer visitors and white doves released at weddings are really variants of homing pigeons. 

In my book "The Poetry of Birds" there is a poem dating from 1986 titled 'Listening to Collared Doves' by E.J. Scovell  (1907 - 1999) but it's not very interesting and not about the doves at all!