Taking pictures

Been having fun with the reverse camera on my iphone.

Look into my eye.....



oops!



Landscape?



Or portrait?



Another phone feature I'd have dismissed before I had it! Do rather like the fact it is 5 megapixel. It doesn't like to be zoomed in to something some way off and performs even less well if the object at a distance is moving but hey, it is a phone, not a dedicated camera, so it can't do everything. But it seems to be coping well with my demands so far.

Some recent chook pics:

Tilly (Bluebell) - one of the newbies



Lizzie (a Copper Maran) - the eldest - a newbie we brought in just after we moved here along with Dot and Ruby, both of whom are now buried beneath a favourite dustbathing spot in the garden. Lizzie is 4 now and today she laid a perfect egg so that will do her I hope for the week or more. Don't want her overdoing it. She has laid several soft shelled ones recently which is possibly a sign (in an otherwise healthy chook) that she is nearing the end of her laying life.



Edna (Cuckoo Maran) and Fannyann (Light Sussex), the other two newbies, settling into the dustbathing craters on the edge of the 'lawn'. Chickens are not for the garden perfectionists who like everything neat and tidy. They are anarchists - orderly doesn't figure. I want ours to have free and all day access to grass and to make their own choices about where they sun and dust bathe so the middle part of the garden is sacrificed to all things chicken.



All mixing together now:





The newbies started to lay their first eggs and do their 'cockerel crouch' when near me last week at around 21 weeks. So they've had 5 weeks longer to mature than they would have had if they had gone on to a middle man to be sold on as point-of-lay pullets at 16 weeks. I moved them on to their Organic Feed Company layers pellets a few days later and began to let them be with Bert and the others in extended periods. Now they are all together free ranging in the garden all day but separate at night. That's the next stage!

Spring weather is bringing up all the bulbs and flowers. We have a couple of very old stone sinks my mother gave us and over the years I have stuffed them full of all kinds of flowers and some herbs. The fritilleries, hyacinths and grape hyacinths are all starting to look lovely. The primroses Mum gave me last year are waiting in the wings, though I have seen them on sunny banks out and about round here already.



If you look really closely you can just see Nellie's face peering out from the porch to see what I am up to in the picture above :)



Was really lucky to see a couple of hares recently. One didn't realise the dogs and I were stood on the other side of the field edge and loped past only yards away, in no particular hurry. I was so mesmerised by the fact I could see the whites of its eyes and the various colours in its coat because I was so close I forgot I could have videod it. Lots of hares here and have seen them 'boxing' before now here too but not usually so close. Also have heard skylarks here in the last few days - one even in the fields next to the cottages and the others in the lightening tree field up beyond the woods.

Even had two starlings around the feeders last week and am seeing some sparrows in the garden this year too. Starlings were regarded as a 'menace' to small garden birds when I was a child and sparrows were everywhere. But haven't seen either here since we came - til now. It is good to see them again.