A scratching behind the television intrigued Pippi Long Stocking who tried to get in to investigate.
I put her in the (f)utility (if a woman’s work is never done, why start?) while I investigated, by pulling out the TV corner-unit, and taking off the room-side cover of the air-vent installed a few years ago (as a daft requirement of having the walls insulated.)
I fully expected a nest of mice. Inside, to my amazement was a little sharp-beaked bird. Possibly a tree-creeper, but difficult to be sure. All I could see was a silhouette of a flapping small thing.
Further investigation, from the out-side side of the air vent, behind the water butt, showed a cover with a very narrow grill, firmly fixed to the wall. How the bird got in there was a complete mystery. Getting it out was a puzzle too. In the end I shut the sitting room curtains, except for a gap where I left the window open. From the outside I occluded the light, so that the bird could see the light from the open window and go towards it.
It didn’t.
However when I tapped the outside I think I scared it out, and although I didn’t see it fly out of the window, from my position behind the water butt, it must have flown. (No birds were knowingly hurt in the making of this blog.) Pippi, however, once I let her back in, was most intrigued with the new position of the TV and the possibility of something interesting in the open vent and tried to get into the narrow hole. I have since taped it up, both on the inside and the outside. After which Pippi feigned disinterest.
I do wonder if the bird was in there investigating a possible nesting site?
**
After lunch there was a little sunshine. I went outside with Pippi and then tried to teach her to come through the cat flap. She was tempted through with salami. Once.
A few garden shots:
When I started in the kitchen about 2.30pm with radio 4 as my companion, it was a bright day with a backdrop of dark clouds. The whiteness of gulls against the sky stood out like chalk on a blackboard. About 4pm a sudden downpour of hail, just as the light was fading, rattled against the steamy kitchen windows.
The Seville oranges I bought this morning were squeezed, and their rinds shredded ready for marmalade making. They boiled in the preserving pan covered with water for a couple of hours this afternoon. Muslin bags, tied to the handles held the pith and pips and the lemons.
The beetroot and celeriac were turned into a beautifully coloured soup. I made a casserole in the slow cooker.
And after the judo run and supper I finished the marmalade started earlier: the scent around the house is wonderful. The anticipation of tasting the freshly made marmalade is making my mouth water.
It has been a good day.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Poor little bird is going to be cold!
Sounds like a good day.
We have an open fireplace in the living room we don’t use, fortunately it has glass doors.
Last year God knows what was in there breeding and rustling and carrying on, the dogs used to stand in a row and bark at the fireplace. I couldn’t be bothered, left whatever it was to carry on! Never did find out.
I once tried to evict a family of raccoons from a chimney in Memphis, big mistake! ‘F that for a game of soldiers’ as the expression goes, never again.
We never light that fire so sod it.
We used to have crickets in the walls in Memphis too, the sound of the seesawing of their legs would drive you nuts, just wouldn’t stop until the cold weather came, it would have necessitated tearing the whole back wall out, again, sod that, turn up the TV!
The UK is very handy like that nothing too bad, I used to have both bats and ravens in the attics of one house in Wales, I drew the line when rats moved in too. Used poison in shoe boxes with little arches cut out so that the bats and ravens couldn’t poison themselves!
Frankly, rather have such’ visitors’ than some of the husbands and boyfriends who hung around, far more amusing.!!!!!
Oh! the joys of living in the woods, I had families of squirrels and birds living in the chimneys before I had the caps put on. My neighbor found a six foot black snake on her basement stairs last week, she has had the “Snakeproofers” there all this week blocking every crack and crevice in the walls. I told her the black snakes are harmless, and that she will probably have a plague of mice if she keeps the snakes out. It’s impossible to keep crickets out of the basement and the crafty buggers go quiet when you turn the light on to try to find them.
I’m quite fond of bats, I think they keep the bugs down, I put up a couple of bat houses that seem to be appreciated, at least it keeps them out of the roof..
We had a kerfuffle in the chimney one summer in Derbyshire. I removed the temporary cover above the firebox and was assaulted by several black-coloured birds whose nest had fallen down the flue. I opened all the windows and retreated until they found their way out. Shades of ‘Birds’, the movie.
🙂
My clearing out the vent has led me to do something I have alaways intended to do… stop up the draft with duct tape!
Just make sure its blocked both ends or else you’ll have things creeping in there and dying!
IN side and outside both taped up. 🙂
https://charioteers.org/2012/01/26/nesting/attachment/7669/#comments
what’s this??
Just followed your link, Nym. I have no idea why these pictures should be attached to your post.
How strange!
How did you discover they were there?
Pseu – It is a picture of a pressure-cooker, uploaded by Tocino in March 2010.
I assume that your question is actually asking “why does it appear when I click on the picture of a Buddha?”. The answer lies in the way in which you copy and paste articles from your blog into the Chariot.
Until recently I have always edited your posts on the Chariot in order to remove false links to non-existent “attachment” pages, but of recent weeks I have ceased to do so.
Ah, interesting Bearsy. Does this happen to me too? Only asking so I may avoid this happening in future, should this be the case.
I haven’t checked, Araminta, but if it does just use the picture editor to remove the link (click on the picture in “Visual” editor mode, click on the edit icon that then appears [top left], then click on ‘none’ near the bottom of the popup). 😀
WordPress has lots of hidden processes which “shield” the user from the (in my view unnecessary) linking of images to posts and attachment pages. It wouldn’t matter too much if the hidden processes were fully designed and implemented, but they’re not; they have holes in them. Pseu’s post exposes one of them.
Thanks, Bearsy.
I haven’t checked mine either but will do so in future! 🙂
I’ve just checked my last post and all the boxes attached to my pictures are blank, which I think it how they should be, if I have understood your instructions.
Apologies if I have inadvertently been causing extra work!
I have edited all the pictures on this post as you suggest and will try to do that in future