Togetherness

In Friday's blip I mentioned the jackdaw pair that have taken advantage of a missing air brick to establish a nest site in our neighbour's roof space. Here they are admiring the view.

The jackdaws here all seem to be in pairs now. They are gregarious birds, gathering into small feeding groups in the day and large roosts at night. In this area they will take advantage of any unprotected, unused chimney to make themselves a nest. We found this to our cost a few years ago when one of our chimney pots was missing its capping cowl. A pair filled the chimney with sticks and it took the sweep all afternoon to clear them at the end of the breeding season. Our neighbour has another pair in her chimney as well as these, clearly she relies on gas central heating.

I spent part of the day clearing some of the paperwork that I brought back from the Old Flyer's house when he died a few years ago. I had a whole file of his various medical appointments: bowel surgery, colonoscopies, gastroscopy, eye surgery, dermatology, haematology and more. The NHS kept him going for his last ten years, what would we do without it? There again, what would I have done without it in 2017?

Later we went to see Arnside Simon on our way back up the hill from the pier. While we were all pleased to see him, Gus was especially so, Simon is one of his special friends. 

Then, since it was a pleasant evening, Gus and I went up the Knott to see the sunset (see extra). There were heavy showers over the Lake District, and we were caught by the edge of one as we came back down. It was worth it though.