My Iowa Commute

[Cyclefrance]

Originally Posted by HLJ

The snow makes for some good exercise. Shoveling is my wife's job.

Now that's some mean job you get her to do - no sooner has she cleared it away than it's back again - what's that saying? - a woman's work is never done...?

Have I misssed something, though, whereabouts are you with all that countryside around you?

I caught that bit about the nuthatches. We regularly have blue tits and coal tits nesting - usually in the specially made boxes, but a few years back when we were converting the garage into a studio for my older son, I left a gap in the outer brickwork where the cabling for the external electrics fed to the consumer unit. We noticed around late spring that our cat was showing a lot of interest in this opening (luckily it was about five feet up the wall) - it turned out that a family of tits had made their nest inside the cavity. WE let them stay, but once they had gone I cemented up the opening.

Not so much trouble as you have though. Must remember to make a note of the bird down-side in case Mrs CF ever gets turned on to buying a timber-clad house.

We do get a lot of woodpeckers arond here - usually the green variety - they can be seen in the summer when the ants are hatching from their nests in the soil as they spend a lot of time on the lawn feasting on the eggs and newly hatched ants swarming around below the lawn's surface.