• Panorama with buzzardYes, I did go walking this afternoon. The sun was shining the sky was blue and it was crisp and cold – perfect weather to look out for buzzards.

    If it wasn’t so cold, I’d expect to see them wheeling around in the air. They love the thermals that shoot up from the sun-warmed ground. The warm air catches under their wings and shoots them up on high. At the top, the slide off and glide to the next thermal. Effortless flight.

    For some reason, I have an eye for Buzzards. I see them all over the place. I have an instinct for looking in the right places. But I couldn’t find one this afternoon. I felt at least one would be hanging around on the top of and electricity pylon. They like the wooden ones.
    Buzzard in treeEventually I found it. The forestry have cleared a large stand of larch up behind where I used to live. In the middle of the waste they have left a dead tree. I hope they left it for the buzzards on purpose.

    It was the first time I’ve really pushed my new camera’s zoom and I was really pleased. I think I need a tripod to get it really steady. Anyway, there was the buzzard sitting in the tree the way buzzards do, just hanging out looking for something easy to catch and eat.

    Looking at the pictures, I’m really very lucky to be able to go out of my front door one way, and walk up to a view like that. Or I can go the other direction and walk into town in five minutes.

  • I was asked by YouTube friend, Savannah, to show how to draw a poodle. That’s a bit tricky as people have different ideas of what a poodle look like. There are big ones and little ones and some are shaved into weird topiary shapes. I hope this one is okay.

  • Nubbly is almost knobbly but more blunt and stubby. I got to know this word from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Story, How The Whale Got His Throat. The whale asks the Stute Fish what man tastes of. “Nice,” says the Stute Fish. “Nice, but nubbly.”

    My computer says it comes from the 19th century word, nubble – being a stumpy, knob-like thing – but I can’t find it in any other dictionaries. I think nubble is a lovely word and should be used. Perhaps it could take on the engineer’s meaning of nipple and so relieve schoolboys of embarrassment or mirth when replacing their bicycle gear and brake cables.

    Learn a new word every day.
    Repeat it and remind yourself what it means at least three times in a day.
    Try to use the word in conversation or writing today.
    Get a dictionary and look words up.