Christmas Battles

Here's one incident I observed over Christmas.

Now I'm not usually this nosy, but...look at this. A heron and a crow. Not a normal sight on our neighbour's roof ridge.

And not just one crow.

Two crows.

Two distinctly aggressive crows.

The battle went on for ten minutes and you may notice the effect it had on the heron by observing the roof...shortly after that, the heron departed.

Our Christmas has been updated almost daily by photographs coming via e-mail. The offspring are travelling, and we received pictures of their various stops as they travelled west to east across America, and north to Tremblant in Canada. The Canadian party of two almost didn't make it as their plane from New York was cancelled due to snow. They got to Montreal and somehow made it to Tremblant where they reported temperatures as low as -40 but I think that was at night. I hope it was at night. Two days later they reported rain washing away all the snow. They were not pleased. I believe a retail therapy trip back to New York was negotiated by one of the party.

The second party of two will be travelling on to France and Switzerland soon, and we shall meet up with them in Zermatt. The other party head back to Oz after New Year.

We have been going for long walks across wet muddy fields, and peering into all the nooks and crannies you can't see in summer for the abundant vegetation. Houses we didn't know existed have suddenly sprung into view now that their shield of leaves has vanished and left them open to the wild winds and my gaze.

I had a couple of days relaxation infront of the tv and I'm still going through the cds that make up the boxed set of Shogun, which I bought to fill the gaps when there was nothing but rubbish on the box. Christmas stuff is usually so sentimental that I can't watch it. Black Beauty, for heaven's sake, drives me out of the room and I dare not switch over to Lassie. Even Johnnie Depp as JM Barrie had me surreptitiously sniffling in my handkerchief.

Then it was back to work. Today I managed 1600 words very easily between Daisy and Rookhope. KEEP TRUST seems to be going very well now I'm concentrating on only one story.