It has been cold, cold cold. It has snowed a bit and the ground is now lightly frozen. What’s a guy to do when the weather conditions are like this. It’s a rhetorical statement because I know a thing or two that can be done. First of all I can make some suet balls for my feathered pals at the lottie. Here are the ingredients all stalled out: In the line-up it is from L to R—two types of mixed bird seeds, sultanas, sunflower seeds, lard and oatmeal. Normally I add some crunchy peanut butter but I did not have enough. I heat up the lard and add the ingredients a little at the time so that I can see when I have enough seeds and so forth mixed in. When I get it the way I want it, I mould the balls. If the lard is too soft for the balls to hold together, I set it in the freezer or outside. After just a few minutes, I try moulding the mix again. Eventually it reaches the right thickness. I have also noticed in the past that one can have too many seeds in the mix. If this happens you cannot get the balls to stick together either. Once the balls are ready, I just set them outside until I am ready to go to the lottie, then they are popped into some sarnie bags and away I go. Once at the lottie I dig out my silo’s and cages to place the balls in. Here is a foto of this years’ suet balls ready for the birds. When I was hanging the balls up, this little robin was pecking around my feet not at all afraid of me. I had to take the foto with my fone. Just a few minutes earlier he was trying to get a seed on the ground that was just under the sole of my garden shoe. One of the pleasures of having a lottie, or a veggie garden at home, is that you can plant what you want, when you want. It is a small pleasure for me that we can harvest fresh veg during the winter. You can’t plant any and all crops, but there are some that continue living and producing during the winter. Leeks are one of those crops. Here is where we dug up six nice ones. Once back home we processed them right away, leaving enough to eat fresh, of course. The veggie plots are asleep---MY sleeping beauties, as it were. Finally to ends this note with a mystery. One of the most interesting things in the winter is to look at all the different footprints in the snow. Most of them I could recognize; however, these I am not sure about. They are in fact very small—about 2cm’s in diameter. I was thinking something like a weasel or ermine perhaps. Have a look and tell me what you think.
My birds just will not eat Commercially grown fat balls. They will eat peanuts when they return to the UK. I may try some worms. At the moment they feed, or they did in summer on slugs...yuck!! Someone else's garage backs onto my garden so I throw slugs up there for the birds......... Brilliant set of fat balls Sjoerd!! K
Thanks Kate, for the compliments on my fat balls-- I was thinking about meal worms too...but where I live only live ones were available--somehow it didn't seem fair to the worms to mould them into the balls. chortle. No, but I know that dried ones exist. There are some birds that would really lurve getting a beak on those. It sounds like you have a good method for ridding yourself of slugs. I am sure the blackbirds and thrushes are thankful. All birds that I have in the lottie eat peanut butter and some prefer taking the peanut seeds to eat...especially the tits. No idea what beast makes those footprints in the snow?
I don't know what made those footprints in the snow. Maybe you should do what the old song says: "I traced her little footprints in the snow, the snow..." Your bird treats look yummy. I'd eat them if I were a bird. And look at the robin, it's sooo cute. We've got one too, and it's almost as trusting as yours. And fresh leek in January, that's just amazing!
Thanks for your comments, Droo. I liked the look of those balls as well. ...I didn't know that you knew bluegrass muziek. Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs....when I read your words, I just broke into song and sort of shocked the bride. I mean, she's used to my crooning, but it came at a strange time. heh heh heh....and I sang loudly, for I like that tune.
I have a varied taste in music, and listen to everything at least once. That particular tune was on a cassette tape that held lots of golden oldies. I played it a lot.
Sjoerd, is it possibly a raccoon? An Opossum? If you're near running water, maybe a Muskrat? I will google animal tracks. Aside from missing fresh veggies, I love the bleak, lonely, wintery space where, on another day, your garden would blossom.
Hiya Growing, Those look indeed like muskrat tracks to me. I was thinking raccoon, but I believe that those are thicker and rounder. I didn't see any "heel" portions on those tracks, but I still think that they belong to a muskrat. If there is a stream nearby, that strengthens the argument for muskrat. We have them here and they are rigorously pursued and exterminated because they pose serious problems for our dikes.
Sjoerd, in what way do muskrats pose a dike problem? My understanding is that they build their home / nest in the banks of streams. Could you mean beaver? They build dams, causing certain problems.
GROWING--The muskrats tunnel into the dikes and thus weaken them. They do burrow into the banks of streams and canals, but when the canals are alongside a dike, then their borrows make it easy for the great water pressure on the other side of the dike to seep and eventually spurt through. WARE--I think that you are right. I can't find any more likely candidates.
Sjoerd, after I asked, I sort of figured it out. Regarding the tracks, it might help to know the size of the footprint.
My footprints were quite small. I did not have anything to measure them with when I took the piccy. They were about the size of the very tip of one's finger...not the whole distal fingerprint segment...only the very tip end.
Checking a site for animal tracks, the closest I could find to shape and size were Red squirrels. The Grey squirrel prints seemed larger, but perhaps a young one?
