Boom Boom Spring Is Here!

I know it has been months since my last post and I do apologise... I promise to try harder!!

Our winter came and went and we did have some rain, I am happy to say. Not a lot, but enough to allow our restrictions to be lifted... although I sincerely hope that we do not regret this later! Our dams are now at the 70% level which is pretty good, but once we are allowed to use water freely again, who knows.

But this is about Spring and the things it brings!
The boom boom bit is for the sound that my heart made one day about two weeks ago.

Read on!!

There I was happily pottering in the garden one morning when suddenly the sound of starlings broke through my thoughts, and looking round to see why and what, I glanced at the lampost where we have a nesting log attached. And saw what looked like a sausage in the entrance/exit hole.

Interesting! (All photos thanks to Rob)

The parent birds were frantic, flying and diving and as I watched, the sausage moved.... and I realised that it was a snake with it's head inside the log, taking one of the two baby starlings that were almost at flying stage.

Starling Surprise!

At this time of the year our garden is inundated with European Starlings (Sturnus Vulgaris). Noisy and gregarious, and eating everything from grasshoppers to fruit to dog pellets, they arrive in a cloud, breed like crazy and then one day, they are gone!

Until next year!

An adult bird in breeding plumage.

Now, we love birds, every kind, it doesn't matter if they are scavengers or exotic feathered beauties. We feed them all. We have four bird baths in the garden and one outside (mainly for the passing canines), and we go through kilos of bird feed and apples and litres of sugar water for the nectar feeders. We have wrestled learner-flyers from the jaws of furious felines, and for a few years running we were unable to relax on our veranda because the malachite sunbirds decided to build their nest and raise their young in a small tree in a barrel for two years and a hanging ornament for one year!

The completed nest on the veranda.

We have erected logs for the barbets and have discovered several nests hidden in our shrubs and trees. We have watched the weavers strip our Dietes Grandiflora leaves and then fly off with bits trailing in their beaks to build in the thorn trees in a neighbour's garden!

They have long strappy leaves that the weavers love!

So, as you see, we love the bird life that frequents our garden. We have recorded over thirty different species to visit our garden over the years since we have been here.

A male weaver in the bird bath in my re-constructed corner!

Looks Like a Snake, Moves Like a Snake.........

I have seen yet again, that I am never too old to learn!

On Friday morning I did a load of washing and carried it out into the courtyard to hang it up. The wind wasn't too strong at that stage, so I was able to complete that task without too much struggle. Usually the clothing and I have a bit of a tussle before I peg it into submission, so when I had finished, instead of ducking back into the kitchen and managing to grab the door before it flung itself open and crashed onto the wall, I stood and watched Morris bat an empty snail shell around! It made an interesting tinkling sound, so we were both entertained!

Then I noticed a silvery looking thing on the ground near my feet. At first glance it looked like the tail of a lizard that had been brought in and then abandoned by one of the cats, but when I bent down to have a closer look, I saw that it was too long and thin to be a tail. And there was definitely a head on one end. The other end was a bit chewed. And there were some bite marks in the middle. And it was very dead. Hmm, l thought, this looks very much like a baby snake!

The head is on the left. See the stripes?

Traumatic Tuesday!

The two words that are heard most often in our home are 'Oh Basil!', followed by one of the following:

A scream if he has suddenly jumped on my back while I am bending over weeding in the garden or has tried to climb up Rob's back while he is in the bathroom.
A sigh if he has brought a mouse in to play. That gets us into 'MouseMode' with a plastic bowl and a fishing net.
A laugh if he has become one of Alfie's toys and is being dragged round the lounge by his ears.
Or a surprised tone if he simply arrives in the house looking innocent!

Basil checking the washing machine! (All pics thanks to Rob)

A Snake got in the Way!

Do you ever get those days where you plan to do something and then something else happens and things change? We had one of those days today! We decided to pull Gemsquash out for a bit of a wash and brush-up as we are heading off next week for a few days to give Alfie a bit of a break.

So, as we were busy outside (well Rob was busy, I was faffing about), a Traffic Police car slowly drove by and we waved and he stopped for a chat. Interestingly, it was the same officer that I spoke to yesterday in town, begging him to come and trap on our road! Anyway, as we were talking, he suddenly said 'Haai, daar's a slang in die pad!' ('Hey, there's a snake in the road') and said a hasty goodbye. And there was. A long yellow/green Cape Cobra was quietly making its way across the road and along the bottom of our neighbour's wall! Towards our house!

It saw me and I stamped my feet a few times, don't ask me why, to let it know that I was there and not happy about the direction he was moving, I think. Anyway, to cut a long story a little shorter, the snake finally wove its way into their garden and ended up behind a large bush next to the wall.

The bush where it ended up!

'B' is for ..............Boomslang!

We have spent the last week peering out of the 'office' window across the road at the neighbours house. More specifically at the wall of the house. And more specifically still, at the ledge at the bottom of the wall where the stone cladding stops and the plain wall begins. And the reason is this, see below!

Look at the huge eye! 

Snakes Alive!

Yes, it's the 's' word! And yes, dear readers, we have a very long, yellow-gold Cape Cobra in residence. In the front garden, that just the other day I was digging and poking around and moving rocks and weeding. And poking a stick down a mole hole wondering quietly to myself if there was a mole down there. The short answer is No. There is no mole down there for the simple reason that the cobra is down there! We saw one last year in the garden but we thought that it had moved on, hopefully far away! Well, a few days ago Rob saw it slide its way behind Mandela Bay, across the stones and pouf, disappear! I know that they are timid and that they are more scared of me (ja, right!) etc etc, but I don't want the cats to play with it, and Dopey was showing signs of doing exactly that! Last year a cobra killed a neighbour's little black Scotty, but the dog managed to fatally wound the snake too and they were both found dead the next morning. So, we have been watching the hole very carefully, (from a safe distance, inside the house actually, through the window,) stamping on the ground as we walk past, and this morning we watched it ooze out of the hole and slide across the garden, up some rocks and over a 90 cm high wall as though the wall wasn't there at all! That bothered me as we have low veranda walls too and I thought that they would be high enough. We even bought a bottle of Snake Repellent and have sprayed it around liberally. Now to find out if it works!

The head appears!

Up and over and away (hopefully!)