Saturday, August 05, 2017

further swallow baiting

howdy


it's more or less a year, to be sure, since i looked at that possibly most English of the English way of doing things, look you see. that of course would be the fine art of swallow baiting, in which one lures and attracts birds of the swallow variety in nature by placing coconuts in their garden. slender is the number of people to have been born and raised in England, or indeed the wider UK, who do not know the why and ways of what indelibly links a swallow to a coconut.

so, anyway. whilst the last few months have seen me engage in an enthusiastic if ultimately failed, to be sure, attempt to lure a kookaburra into my garden, i have most surely returned to the idea of swallow baiting. a move more accidental than incidental perhaps, but let me not discuss everything at once. pictures are what you people like, especially in Commodore 64 mode.



whereas i welcome all birds to come and feast upon what i place in my garden it is not the case that i have a preference for which ones do. that's not true, of course i am eager for a kookaburra to come along, to be sure. rather what i mean is that this move with a return to coconut has not been deliberately engineered to attract the swallow as such. mostly it's due to the fact that my usual, indeed preferred, proprietor what sells stuff to feed to birds had a combination of being out of stock on most forms of seeds whilst having a significant number of packs of coconuts for sale at a discount. a discount which worked out in ostensible ways to half price. recent posts which i won't link to about underwear and caps tell you all that you could wish to know of my inability to avoid what i would think to be a bargain.

it is not actual, all full tilt, essential coconut that i have placed in the garden. no. they are halved and have been packed with a quasi fatty mix of suet, seed and other items of consumption that presumably someone somewhere ascertained that the birds like to eat. or that they are all substances which the birds should be eating in order to sustain a healthy (by avian standards) life.

no swallows as such thus far, but at the least a jackdaw has come along and expressed an interest. apologies for the poor quality of the next image. we would do well to learn much from birds, for their hearing is so ace that when i make the slightest movement inside they tend to hear it and, alas, fly away in fright.



some delighted tits were visible in my garden at the scene of the above. prior to this a blue tit had flown in, had something of a sniff a look and an inspection of the coconut. the bird sort of looked at me after doing so (in my general direction, at the least) with a manner which suggested that it (or he or she) was trying to communicate with me. the communication would be along the lines of "this displeases me, bring back the seeds".

perhaps the coconut containing the mixture was too hard and tricky to penetrate for the tit. this would explain the bouncy with joy what the tits did in my (sorry, our) garden when the jackdaw broke some of the contents down free to the ground for them to eat.



maybe this placement of coconut in the garden is coming to be an "August" thing that i will now do each year, intrinsically or maybe subconsciously. also, perhaps a new trend has started here. it might be jolly fun - and easier - for me to follow the Kasabian model. by calling their most recent album For Crying Out Loud (2017) they have possibly set a trend in which all of their albums will now be called For Crying Out Loud, with the only differentiation for staff at HMV being the year in brackets after the title. it might be of interest if i spent a year simply rewriting or otherwise revisiting blog posts from that date from the year before.

well, there we have it. should this latest coconut endeavour succeed in attracting swallows, or kookaburras for that matter, and i manage to take a picture and remember to do so, i shall most certainly add such here.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



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