417
 
In this blogposting…
* AGM XXXVIII
* Feed the Birds
* The Card Stacker
Onward…


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AGM XXXVIII
It seems that my apologies for absenting myself from the last AGM aren’t quite over yet.  I’m told that Stephen and Heidi were also at The Bridge pub at the appointed hour last week.  But, because they’d never met Dave, Gerry, Hilary or J Arthur Smallpiece, they didn’t recognise them as fellow-truckshunters and (understandably) kept their distance.

So - once again - my apologies for making such a dog’s breakfast of AGM XXXVIII and especially to Stephen and Heidi, to whom I didn’t apologise last time.

I’m getting a headache.

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FEED THE BIRDS
This is my usual early winter exhortation to look after your neighbourhood birds, although I’m sure you don’t need my encouragement to do it.  I know in my bones that truckshunters are the sort of people who make sure that local birdlife doesn’t go without food now that the weather’s turned nasty (one way or another).

Here in High Elswick, we’ve been rewarded by many visiting blackbirds, coal tits, blue tits, hedge sparrows, robins, great tits, chaffinches and magpies - all of which, between them, hoover up the goodies we put out for them unsettlingly quickly.

None of them are particular rarities but they don’t need to be.  The liberating pleasure I get from just sitting and looking at them is worth a king’s ransom - specially the blackbirds and chaffinches.

It’s even more startling in the Beaujolais countryside.  If you glance at Serge’s blog here:  http://spepere.blogspot.co.uk - you’ll see that whole flocks of birds have made his country garden into a kind of ornithological community centre.  Amongst them are…

mésange charbonnière - great tit
moineau - house sparrow
geai - jay
mésange bleu - blue tit
pie - magpie
merle - blackbird
mésange noir - coal tit
accenteur - hedge sparrow
mésange nonette - marsh tit

Unsurprisingly, a buse (buzzard) hovers about occasionally and there’s a very audible pic (woodpecker) living nearby, too.

(In Serge’s posting 157 you can read about his rescue of a hedge-sparrow that knocked itself out on his window pane.  There are some cracking pictures to go with the story, too. 
He is even lucky enough to have regular visits from a red squirrel (ecureuil), which, for reasons no-one quite understands, are much more common in France than grey squirrels are.)

So please - at the risk of sounding boring - PLEASE remember to feed the birds this winter.  They need us now more than ever.

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THE CARD STACKER
Eric and Jean have sent me an email about Bryan Berg, who is the world’s only professional cardstacker.  Which means that he builds things out of playing cards on a very large scale indeed.

He uses no tape, glue or tricks and his method has been tested to support 660lbs per square foot.

But pictures speak louder than words…
 
 
 
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CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me:  truckshunters@googlemail.com

2 comments:

Serge said...

Bonjour IAN

Merci d'avoir parlé du sauvetage de l'Accenteur mouchet.(chipie) oui c'est bien le nom que je lui ai donné, car c'était bien une femelle. J'espère que sa guérison là emmenée vers d'autres horizons. Un grand merci bisous xxxxx

NEV said...

Hi folks.... best Christmas wishes to all you Truckshunters out there, and to dear Sid who sent a lovely card via the Tanfield Railway...many thanks.
NEV