First Fledglings

I heard them first, of course, such loud noises for such tiny creatures. Just before half past eight, a sunny, windy morning, and I was taking Ty out. There they were, right on edge of the coombe, a nestful of wrens trying their wings for the first time. I counted seven in sight at once, though there were probably more. Three of them landed on a tree trunk just in front of me; two went off to the sides, the third came to a branch within two feet of my eyes and stayed there for more than a minute. I've never been that close for that long to a wren before, so close I could count the spots on those new shiny feathers. I didn't realise they fledged with such short tails - there is nothing there to take away the roundness of the outline.

Our local Lidl was advertising folding wooden garden chairs this week, available from Thursday. On Tuesday, or thereabouts, I showed the picture to Ron and we decided we'd have a couple. Yesterday (Friday) I went to get some - and discovered that they had sold out within a couple of hours of the shop opening on Thursday morning! They did, however, have some of the rather more substantial (and more expensive) folding armchairs, so I got one of those instead.

It's really too big for our 'garden' - I'm fairly certain I won't be able to use it when the rotary clothes dryer is opened out - but very comfortable, and I tested it for an hour yesterday afternoon with a cup of tea and a good book. If we have a summer (and it seems as if it may happen, judging by this week anyway) I am prepared. Next project is to get a laptop, after which I may well move outdoors altogether...

Sunny Sunday

I put shorts on (well I unzipped and discarded the lower legs of my trekking trousers) for the first time yesterday. Even at 8.30, when I experimentally tested the bare legs down the Coombe, it only felt strange for a minute or so, then perfectly natural. Good, I thought, summer is here...

It was a beautiful day, sunny and bright with just about enough of a breeze to make it comfortable. We had a nice, gentle six mile walk around Wadebridge, starting in the Jubilee park, ascending gently up through footpaths and shady (even sometimes muddy) green lanes to Burlawn, down through the village then along the Forestry Commission track through Bishopswood to join the Camel Trail and thence back to Wadebridge. It was what summer walkies should be - no unusual sights but a general feeling of warm green brightness sparked through with bright flowers and birdsong. Lots of water for the dogs to play in, as well.

It was Ty's first proper walk since he hurt his paw, and he was fine. A slight limp when he got tired, but apart from that he seemed to enjoy himself. So much so that he slept most of the afternoon!

I went home and collected Ron at three so that we could spend a typical Sunday afternoon at the Copley - sipping cider by a trout stream in good company. The sunshine was a bonus - and in fact at one stage we gave some consideration to moving over the bridge to the shady side of the stream, but decided this was still a little previous.

Today, though, Bank Holiday Monday, all has changed. It's cool and dull and slightly spitting with rain. I was pleased to observe that for the first time this year it was drier under the trees in the Coombe than out in the open.

Tide out, tide in

It is always a pleasure to go down to the Creek. And often an unexpected pleasure, as it is impossible to see whether the tide is in or out, and what's there, until you cross the bridge and go down a narrow overgrown footpath beside the stream to where it suddenly opens out into a panorama framed by the railway viaduct.

This morning, a flock of upwards of two dozen house martins. Circling round and round, always gliding in to the same favoured bit of damp mud before taking off again. I hadn't seen them since this time last year, and I don't know whether they nest somewhere around here or are just passing through, although the mud testing seems to suggest they are thinking about settling.

When we lived in Spain our apartment block - and several others around the square - had big overhanging concrete porches supported by concrete columns, and it seemed that every corner had a martins' nest in it. They seem totally unfazed by the presence of people, cars, animals, noise, pollution...

The tide was right out this morning, but yesterday afternoon it was different. I'd somehow managed to acquire an extra dog on the way through the Coombe (well Ty and gone and charmed Marjorie into a nice heap of cookies, so it seemed only polite to take Tilly on our walk). She's not the most obedient of dogs, and she flew over the road and down the path to the creek faster than I could see that it was full of water and covered with swans (and Gordon the Goose, of course). By the time Ty and I had walked sedately to the water's edge she was in it, standing there staring at me in exactly the same way as Jake does. Not swimming, in fact refusing to swim when a stick is thrown, but wanting the stick to be thrown anyway.

I wasn't bothered about the swans as they were all the adolescent gang from the Waterside, well used to dogs and not protecting cygnets, although from the way Gordon bullies them I wouldn't put it past him to pick a fight with a collie. Anyway, as Tilly was in the water I had to let Ty go for a swim as well. Very noisy he was too, which got the swans all milling around staring at him from a safe distance of about ten feet away. And appeared to amuse the audience I eventually realised we had, standing in their garden looking down on us. I suppose they had been admiring the wildlife before the mad dogs and wild lady arrived...

On the way back I saw the first dog roses of the year in flower, and also suddenly a lot of brambles. Summer now seems to be well and truly here - all we need now is the weather to go with it.

Egyptian Geese revisited and pictured!

Well the promised card reader arrived from Ebay today - and the card from my camera is not compatible. This is spite of the fact that it was actually listed on the Ebay description, which is why I chose that particular reader from the several dozen models available. I was deeply disappointed, and have emailed them for advice, but in the meantime I fiddled and played and got all sorts of error messages but eventually managed to download the pictures I took on Saturday by way of the USB lead supplied with the camera. What software (if any) it was using I'm not sure - I'd downloaded a Windows 98 update from the Camera site (the only free update available) then when I plugged the camera in XP 'detected' it as new hardware, offered to find the software, claimed it couldn't and it wouldn't work, and it did... So now for today's second technical question - how to put a goose on a blog?

And at the third attempt, it's even more or less where I wanted it to be! So there you are, that's three new things I've done today.

The first new thing was a Tai Chi class at lunchtime. I imagine that when one knows what one is doing it may be destressing and relaxing, but I can't even walk the way I'm supposed to without falling over at the moment, let alone do a 'hip brush push' at the same time (if that's what it is called). Very great concentration is required and I can see that it will be good for my coordination and balance eventually, so I shall persevere with it for a while.

It is interesting that I have had to learn yet another 'correct' way of standing and breathing - yoga posture and breathing are different from pilates, and tai chi is different again. I wonder which is really the ideal? None of them seem quite natural to me...

Egyptian Geese

The Egyptian Goose is neither a goose nor from Egypt. It's not very British, not a native, but this afternoon there were a pair of them paddling up the river Avon (not 'that' Avon, either, but the one in the South Hams). They very obligingly came out of the water and posed for photographs, too.

We were looking at a boat for sale moored on the Avon near Aveton Gifford, out towards Kingsbridge. Ron was clambering all over it and I was watching swallows swooping down for mud for nest building when these strange birds suddenly appeared. They are actually shelduck, not geese, and only the second pair I have ever seen - the last time was in Holland on the Markermeer in 2002.

So why is there no photograph accompanying these words? Ah, well...

Last week I acquired a new printer through Freecycle. A rather posh one, all singing, all dancing, photos and faxes and scanning and everything. With card slots so that I could get the pictures from my outmoded digital camera - so old there's no software for it any more - actually on to the computer. Or so I thought. When we got home from our expedition I was keen to admire my wildlife shots (and some pictures of the boat). Unfortunately, however, the printer is so new that it doesn't accept the old photo card. Ebay will sell me a card reader for £6.95, thank you very much, and when it arrives I'll have something to try it out on.

This totally outmoded camera is probably less than ten years old. It takes very good photographs, and I don't see why I should replace it, but I may have to if I can't get it to work. Time was when good quality equipment lasted, now it's not supposed to...

Milgram vs Portillo - a course in TV ethics

This evening I watched BBC2's Horizon - Michael Portillo on the subject of violence. He was asking himself and various 'experts' what makes people violent, is it inborn or taught, etc. Right from the beginning when he went to a remote south american village to watch the indians having their once-a-year fight festival I found the whole thing annoying - he didn't, for example, even wonder what the level of violence among the tribe was for the other 364 days a year - but in the second half of the programme he invited us to watch some social psychologists at work on an experiment.

Now when I was studying psychology we talked about ethics a lot. There were some experiments which had been done in the past which it was now realised had been unethical; we even discussed whether it was ethical to take the results of these experiments into account (yes, otherwise all that pain had been wasted) and whether it would be permissible to repeat any of these experiments (no, certainly not). As I understood it, anything which could potentially traumatise the subjects, human or animal, or an experiment was no longer permissible. Nor was any deception allowed, such as telling a subject that the purpose of the experiment was X when in fact it was Y.

So what does Portillo do? He repeats Milgram, that's what. The single most infamous experiment, the one which where people are encouraged to give other people more and more severe electric shocks in the interests of scientific study. The one which sparked off the entire ethics debate in the first place. The one which I was repeatedly told when I was studying would and could never be repeated in our modern enlightened times.

Basically a study of how obedient the average person is to authority, Milgram found that 65 percent of his subjects would administer what they believed to be a lethal shock to another if told to by a person in authority. As I understand it, several of his subjects were traumatised for life when they realised what they had done and how they had been duped into doing it. Portillo only had three refusals out of 12 subjects, which is a similar enough result to be acceptable, but why do it? Surely there must be ethics committees involved in television programmes? Well, perhaps not. I really do feel, however, that there was no good reason for repeating this.

Another wonderful conclusion he came to was that when someone has been deprived of sleep for three days their judgement is somewhat impaired and they are slightly more aggressive than usual. What a surprise!

This programme has made me slightly more aggressive than usual. And that is a surprise.