The video below is of upside down ducks.
And please it is not a delicious duck recipe. 🙂
I took the video while we were perambulating at Golders Hill Park in North West London on a sunny day early this spring 2018.
To be honest for a girl, who grew up in a farm, I have never seen ducks feeding in the water in an upside down position. It was rather amazing to see and watch them doing their business.
@GlobalGranaryVideo
Kakiemon Elephant
This Kakiemon elephant is on display at the British Museum.
This is apparently made between 1660-1690 in the Kakiemon style. Kakiemon is the first to create the enamel porcelain. What is interesting about this sculpture is that the artist has never seen an elephant.
You might have noticed that the elephant trunk in the photo is pointing downward. There is a superstition in the east that pointing downward is for good luck. In the west, it is the opposite. It should be upward. Another case of east and west not meeting. LOL
What do we know about elephants?
Asian (Indian) Elephants which smaller in stature, smaller ears and only the male have tusks.
African Elephants are larger with larger ears. Both male and female have tusks. They are also less hairy than the Asian elephants.
The proof is in the eating of the cupcake, lol, Photo by PH Morton
It is true I am afraid, well in my case anyway. I love chocolates and it shows: in the tummy area, along the hips, in the face and everywhere. 🙂
Belonging to the class mammalia (species with the mammary glands, lol) we are rather versatile in what we include in what we eat.
There are at least four classifications of diets or intake of nourishment. Which do you belong?
Goldfish, photo by PH Morton
Goldfish, Photo by PH Morton
We have kept goldfish in our garden pond since 2006. I remember digging a hole for the pond during a rather fraught England game during the World Cup 2006. I must say because of that game we were able to build a pond in just a few hours. 🙂
It was so exciting filling up the pond, watching the flow of water into a thick black plastic liner. We were novice about keeping a pond so without much thought, we released a lone red goldfish my son had in an aquarium.
My son then said ‘you might just had killed that goldfish. You are to wait at least three days for the water to settle and then introduce the fish slowly to acclimatise to the temperature.”
Thank goodness, the fish survived. He is resilient!
Goldfish is a freshwater fish, they are easy to keep, as we have discovered, therefore, the most popular fish for ponds and aquariums.
There is a myth that goldfish has only a 3-second memory but this is not true. Our goldfish in our pond know about feeding time. They have also been a victim of a starving heron, which ate more than half of their numbers. This so traumatised those who were left behind (including us) that they would not willingly come up the water surface anymore. We had to put netting near the surface of the pond and this seemed to have reassured the remaining goldfish.
Apparently a study was done by the School of Psychology in the University of Plymouth. It was found that goldfish have at least 3 months worth of memory. They can recognise sound, colours and shapes.
Photo by Peter Morton @ Golders Park “Butterfly House”
Parakeet in Childshill, London, photo by PH Morton
More and more wild parakeets are seen freely flying and nesting all around London. I first saw parakeets on top of a tree at Hyde Park four years ago. I thought they were not really a natural bird for cold UK.
As much as they are so lovely to look at, there are some negative implications to our local birds.
When we were both still gainfully employed, 😉 it was hard to maintain our fairly long back garden, where the lawn must be mowed, the bushes regularly trimmed, the pond life fed, the garden furniture repaired, etc., the list went on. We, therefore, paved over parts of it, but still kept some smaller flower& plant beds and a good size lawn.
A good idea in any size garden is to use plant pots or troughs to grow plants, flowers and vegetables.
Some of the larger pots are fitted with small wheels (like castors) on the base.
This means that we can easily move large plants, such as the tomato plants, to follow the sun as it moves, to maximise exposure to the light and heat.
This spring, and as in previous years, Jean & I decided to try and grow some tomato plants in three of our large pots. Tomatoes are quite inexpensive and plentifully sold in shops and supermarket during the summer, but growing your own has its own reward. You can be sure of the freshness and they seem to taste better 🙂
This year’s weather has been mixed in London & SE England.
A rarely frozen and wet winter was followed by rain alternating with hot sunny days in summer, extending well into September. This combination has resulted in a nice crop of tomatoes. some have ripened and hopefully the others will soon as well.
Our two potted small apple trees have produced their ripe fruit nearly a month early this year.
They are ‘Jonagold’ apples, which are sweet and a little bitter to taste but simply delicious.
We found that If you have two potted apple trees, keep them near each other in order to get at least one good crop, this helps cross fertilisation from the bees etc.
We find each year that one tree produces more apples than the other.
However, this year both tree have a lot of apples, thanks to the weather.
We have one potted Conference variety pear tree, near the end of the garden, and as with the apple trees we also need to get another one as this lonely tree only produces a pair of pears each year.
Our wild blackberry bush has also produce a bounty of berries this year too!
We wonder if this year’s winter will be cold and wet again. Snow has not fallen to settle on the ground here in nearly the last two years, much to our grandson’s disappointment who is wishing of building a snowman in the garden!
Not so little piggy on way to market.
Photo: PH Morton
Bert & Bubbles, iphone photo by JMorton
Bert & Bubbles, iphone photo by JMorton
Our pet budgie, Bert, has been alone in his cage for a couple of years now. Though he is very friendly with our dog, Diesel, we thought it was about time to get him a companion of his own kind, and so we did today.
Stacey, our daughter-in-law, found a pet shop, that sells budgies. The shop was the Jumanji pet shop, which is located at the Kilburn High Street, just by Lloyds Bank, next to Iceland supermarket.
At the back of the shop, is where the animals are. There were rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and even rats (ugh) And there were lots of birds. There was a pair of lavender-coloured love birds, which only had eyes for each other. 🙂
Luckily they have budgies and we had to look for a female one, apparently as we have a male already, he would need a female companion. Another male would mean cage war. 🙁
Bert did have a female companion when we got him, but sadly Lolly died. She hurt her wing while trying to fly and never really recovered.
The female budgie we got today which costs £28 was a beautiful blue one. Bert, thought so too. As soon as he saw, Bubbles (named after Nathan’s bubble gum), Bert had not stopped preening. In fact, he looked so much better, his plumage is much brighter, emerald green. He is so attentive to the new bird. He was ‘kissing’ her all the time.
The shop assistant at the Jumanji pet shop, advised to return Bubbles within the next 7 days, if she doesn’t get on with Bert.
Fingers crossed, it seems they are getting along just fine.
Jumanji Pet Shop was very clean and all the animals are well looked after. They had food and water. A trusted commercial establishment for pets.
Astride a statue tortoise, photo by PH Morton
Galapagos Tortoise at ZSL London Zoo, photo by PH Morton
Galapagos Tortoise at ZSL London Zoo, photo by PH Morton
Galapagos tortoises are the largest in the world and they can outlive me very easily as their life span is up to 150 years.
These galapagos tortoises played a major role in Charles Darwin’s revolutionary theory of Natural Selection theory when he visited Galapagos Island in 1835.