Starling oopsie

Whew!  What a busy day.  I've managed to crack out over 14,000 steps by just pottering and doing chores and domestics.

I began by 'eating' my 'frog'........the 2 house wash sections that weren't done yesterday.  These 2 areas both involved being up on a roof which is accessed for one, via an large, upstairs window.......nice and easy.......and the other, by climbing up a ladder onto the roof......my frog!  I was super cautious, took my time and breathed a massive sigh of relief when my feet were back on terra firma.  Yay - now the house really is finished.  Other chores included mowing the lawns, supermarket shopping, mince-pie shopping from the local bakery, topping up the milk suppplies (the farm outlet will be closed for 3 days), dropping some items off at the local Restore store, fixing a wonky downpipe, washing and re-hanging curtfains and the best......though not really a chore.......spending a good half an hour or so chatting to the couple who won my Trade Me auction for my old van solar system when they came to pick it up.  It's going to be added to their off-the-grid bach (holiday home) which sits in the middle of their [substantial] block of land over towards Mt Arthur.  Lovely people with a fascinating life-style option.

Later on, when I sat down for a rest in the garden I heard this chap making a lot of noise in a nearby tree.  I don't know whether the bug was putting up a fight, another starling was threatening to steal it from him or he was singing his own praises after catching what looked like quite a sizeable bug.  For 3 or 4 minutes he kept his beak clamped onto the bug but then, suddenly, he seemed to lose his grasp and it dropped from his beak.  All that effort for nil reward!  It was only when I looked at the photos on the screen I could see he'd actually cut the bug in half hence it falling from his beak rather than him dropping it.  Gross but fascinating at the same time.

In COVID news, there were 62 new community cases today; 45 people are in hospital, 8 in ICU.  Sadly, 1 death was reported.