The passage of time.

I was at a friends birthday 'bash' this weekend. It was held in the Winter Gardens at the People's Palace in Glasgow, and I also met a couple of other 'blogger' friends there.
The guy who had reached his 50th birthday, had a huge banner up, [which matched the invitations he had sent out too] showing seven pictures of his head, from a baby to present day, and I have to say that he really hasn't changed over the years!!
However one of the speakers mentioned that reaching forty was the old age of youth but that reaching fifty was the youth of old age.
Which means that at the moment I have past the old age of youth and am fast approaching the youth of old age - but mentally I feel between twenty and thirty!!

One of bloggers has just opened a new blog site called Glasgow Details - well worth a look if you like pictures of interesting details from buildings etc, or want to see the less usual side of central Glasgow.

I spent some of the weekend working and relaxing in my garden, which fills up with birds on a regular basis, especially after I have refilled bird baths and bird feeders, and then sat down. Dunnocks now come and feed from the bottle seed feeder which is hanging about a metre off the ground. My late husband made an adaptation of hanging a small green bucket underneath as he was fed up [!] of the House Sparrows chucking all the seeds they didn't want onto the ground and all the local 'doos' [Feral Pigeons] massing below the feeder and making a mess. The bucket catches about 95 % of the spillage. However, there are a lot of clever birds out there. The birds now employ a couple of new methods. I have watched the House Sparrows, Dunnocks, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits and Robins all fly into the bucket, grab some seed and fly out again - quite quickly. The other birds must have seen this too as I have also seen larger birds making use of the bucket. It started with the resident Jackdaws perching on the side and stretching in to reach the seeds. Then I saw a couple of pigeons doing the same!! The next thing I saw was a bit of tail and a head bobbing up and down from the interior of the bucket!! I had heard of chicken in a basket but this was pigeon in a bucket! There are now at least four different pigeons who emply this method of getting a feed. They have abviously realised that it is NOT a trap!!
I had another spectacular visitor to the seedfeeder in the middle of January, when there was large amounts of Blue Tits, Great Tits , Coal Tits and Long Tailed Tits visiting. I was lucky enough to be standing at a first floor window - watching the feeding station, when I spotted a Sparrowhawk, perched on my fence - across the garden and down behind a cyprus tree. The next moment there was a flurry of wings and the Sparrowhawk had flown around the tree and had tried to catch a Blue Tit at the feeder. It had narrowly escaped by flying into the Lilac bush next to the feeder, as had all the other small birds. The Sparrowhawk landed on the nearby bird table, gave itself a ruffle and then flew off - empty clawed!

The most recent unusual sighting I have seen, was just on Friday evening, when I had gone out to try and get my fatcat back inside for the night. She was out at the road and not for coming home [as yet]. The next thing was a flicker of wings in the glooming - a Tawny Owl had flown down the road, and had just past the street lamp when I think it got 'spooked' when the cat suddenly moved, as the Owl flew straight up into my neighbours large Copper Beech Tree. My cat then ran across the road into the neighbours garden, where I know she hunts mice [apart from her bringing back four LIVE mice during the wetter weather, I had seen mice scampering along the top of the neighbours wall [under a privet hedge] when My cat was wandering around on the other side {she has a large patch of white which shows up under the nearby street lamp!}. The Tawny Owl just sat in the tree tops for about ten minutes watching the cat wandering about under the tree, then the Owl flew off towards another garden. I knew there were Owls in the area, as I have heard them screeching to each other, but I hadn't seen one that close to the house before. Pipistrelle Bats yes, but not the Owls.
Enough for now - after all time is passing!!!