Skeggy And Back

We've been to sunny Skegness to open our 'tin hut' by the sea. Of course the first thing we all do - after the boring, de-wigwamming of the seating and mattresses, collecting swimming salt dishes, cleaning and finally hanging three miles of colour coded [so I know which of the nine windows it belongs to] nets - is to check that all our near neighbours are still not dead ... it's what caravan owners do after winter because most are of a certain age and winter is when we tend to drop off our perches.

As luck would have it, we had no losses this year [unlike last] so all's well with our little world.

Our badgers have been visiting again, it only took a few nights of peanuts left out before we saw one. Then a week went by and although the nuts were gone every morning we never had another badger sighting. The fox did pay us a visit but he's like lightening and won't pose for a photo.

A couple of nights before returning home we decided to wait up until a badger came but had to give in about 2.00am. The following night the cat woke me up at 12.30 [we were too tired to wait up again], I went to threaten her with violence see what she wanted and she ran into the living room to look through the window.

There he was - a badger munching loudly on his nuts. They are very noisy eaters who wouldn't be invited to eat at my dinner table [my grumpy old man only scrapes through by dint of it being his table]. I woke grumpy up so he could have a look and apologised to my clever cat who purred her way back to bed.

It took approximately two hours for most of the birds to return once the food was out, including twelve greenfinches, two thrushes, chaffinches, goldfinches, great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds, ducks ... and house sparrows - which strangely enough we don't see in our bit of Langley Mill.

We do have dunnocks at home - who stupidly nested in a bush next to our kitchen window, lining the nest with my neighbours cat's fur. You'd have thought the material used would have told them that it wasn't a good idea. Anyway it was sadly abandoned with one turquoise egg dropped in a flower pot below by the time we got home.

Hmm, home, well that's another story ...