Saturday 24 October 2009

Autumn, Seasons, and the Grey Squirrel

The two seasons of the year I enjoy the most are the Spring and Autumn. To me the Summer is the worst season as it's the most unpredictable, and it's either too hot for me or I get fed-up with being drenched in sudden downpours of horizontal rain (of the type that saturates and leaks through the left side of your jacket, yet leaves the right side stone dry!). At least in the Winter I know it's going to be cold, windy, dark, and frosty, and with surprisingly less horizontal rain than in the Summer, and it's far easier for me to wrap up warm against a cold climate than it is for me to keep cool in a hot sun-burning climate.

But there's also the transition of nature during the Spring and Autumn. Almost as though I'm not the only living being that prepares myself between the two extremes of Winter and Summer.

Where I live (In Salford) in an urban village I'm very lucky to be able to see these transitions of nature between the seasons, and in fact much of it happens right on my doorstep within the grounds of the little block of flats I live in. From the hedge sparrows, to cheeky chirpy blackbirds, and certainly to the antics of the Grey Squirrel!

Actually I took these next two photo's last Spring, but seeing as the grey squirrel is most active in both the Spring and the Autumn I guess it just about fits in with this Autumn.



I think the next photo shows just how well adapted the grey squirrel actually is to it's environment. Just compare those feet claws to those of the Red Squirrel.


Sadly this cheeky chap must have moved on. I guess it maybe due to the ground-floor tenant who used to put out the birdseed and nuts earlier this year has also moved on. However, a cheeky chirpy blackbird and some 'spuggies' are still there in that area of the garden. Who knows what next Spring will reveal?

4 comments:

Keith said...

"Spuggies". I think we had better explain to non-Midlanders that that is the nickname used to refer to house-sparrows.

I should know, I shot a vast number of them with my Webley air-gun when I was a snotty-nosed little brat of about 13!

Nowadays it's my cat that's devasting them around here.

Kevin 'In Salford' said...

Hi Keith,

Thanks for pointing that out, you're quite right. The Midlands slang crept in there unfortunately. In fact I have to admit it was a badly written article anyway, purely to quickly get some text around a couple of my photo's that had been sitting in 'draft' for some time.

Mind you, given that within most of Salford only feral pigeons and magpies are to be seen, it's highly likely that most Salfordian's wouldn't even know what a sparrow is - let alone "spuggies". (Ouch!).

Webley's - the best - and they're British!

Some twenty-or-so years ago I owned a matched pair of re-sprung .177 and .22 full legal limit (10 ft/lbs) Webley air rifles, complete with telescopic sights. But I only used them in properly supervised longer range 'paper target' sports shooting club meetings. And given that I hadn't used them for some years I eventually handed them in to the local Police arms amnesty some six or seven years ago.

justin said...

Nice photos, Kevin ... and a well-written post.
Squirrels are a bit of a nuisance round here, as there are a lot of trees around for them, plus I suspect a lot of people who feed them. They eat the bird food if they get the chance, scamper over my wooden fences, and dig up & eat Mrs C's newly planted bulbs.
One of my friends thinks of them as rats with bushier tails.

Anonymous said...

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