Neal
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Everything posted by Neal
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Update: the three pekins have been with us now for a week and are doing fine in their temporary home. However, looking ahead to when they need to be moved into a permanent walk-in run, I'm wondering about what to put on the ground. I've done lots of research but I'm getting widely differing viewpoints. Some people say to put it on concrete (with or without something on top) as it's easier to hose out, whereas some say to put them on grass with something on top as the concrete will be too abrasive for ducks' feet. The options mentioned for the base include: large woodchips,
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According to the local news, it's not as simple as just washing it off. Not only are the sarsen stones porous, but they're home to a rare lichen. They interviewed all the people who were waiting to go onto the site and not one single person was sympathetic to their cause. I simply don't get it; if anything they're putting people off a cause they might otherwise have been backing.
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I get peed off for getting frowned at for not having dogs on leads near sheep. I try to point out that a dog on a lead is only "not chasing sheep" because it's physically restrained. I'd much rather have a dog which ignores them because it's been taught from a young age to have no vested interest in them. That sounds ironic considering I have two sheepdogs. What I mean is that the dog always on a lead could very easily still want to chase them if off the lead. There's no way of knowing. I don't let mine wander around willy-nilly, but at least I know that, if they're unsighted momentarily
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I had a great day! Huge pile of chocolate from my son. Lots of bits and bobs from my daughter, including a hand painted globe with a picture of me and her on it and she'd written "You're my whole world" on it. Then, yesterday evening, went to Southampton for a goat curry and a Madness gig! Best father's day ever! Must admit that my arms ache after holding my twelve year old daughter for an hour and a half dancing at the gig.
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When I was at art college in Falmouth we did photography as part of the course. I'd previously been quite anti-photography as I saw it as cheating. However, I really got into the enjoyment of it. I only used black and white of course, but I found after a while that I started looking at the world in black and white. I shared a house with one of the students on the pure photography course and he said to me once that, although he was technically a better photographer than me (I quickly forgot all the f stop stuff, exposure times and everything) I had an eye for a good photo. The way he descr
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We almost always had a glass tank in the garden with toads or slow worms in. The first time I caught a load of newts (flooded section at the end of the old railway line in Gosport) I didn't realise they could climb up the glass! Woke up the following morning to find it almost empty and had to spend the day scouring the house for random newts. I can still remember my mum finding one dead behind the fridge months later. Always felt really bad about that. I now insist my son puts a lid on the tank whenever he brings anything home. Edited to add: one of those first newts I caught was ins
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I've had an interesting email conversation with a lady "oop north" who breeds Hungarian wirehaired vizslas. She said that, as I've worked kelpies for a quarter of a century, an HWV should be no problem.
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I found a robin's nest in the local wood on Monday. Three eggs but she'd not started sitting yet. Went back on Tuesday to find her sitting on the nest so left her to it. Decided to check in one of my books how long incubation is and go back to get some photos of the parents feeding the chicks. Wednesday: no bird and only one egg! Thursday: last egg gone. Plenty of jays, magpies and squirrels in the wood. I wonder which it was.
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That reminds me of when I sent a photo of a deer bed to my brother. I sent a close-up and pointed out the scattering of hairs. When he said I must have good eyesight to have spotted it in the middle of the wood, I had to admit that less than a minute before I took the photo there was a roe laying down in it.
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I was looking at the first photo for about a minute thinking it's no good, I'm going to have to cheat and look at the other photos below to see where the bird is,and then I saw it was eggs.
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I bumped into a bloke in the wood yesterday afternoon who I've met a couple of times before. He walks his parents flatcoated retriever and stopped me for a long chat once as he's in a similar position to me i.e. wondering which dog to get as (in his case) his first dog, and he was interested in finding out about my kelpies. Complete coincidence, yesterday he said one type he'd considered, and which he thought might interest me, was a borador (so half collie half labrador). He then went on to ask if I'd ever heard of Australian cattle dogs! It turned out he'd just returned from a hol
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I think The Abyss was a cave system close to where he fell. I lost a stone and a half thanks to using the diet he recommended after watching him on TV. And watching another of his programmes helped cure my insomnia. I was waiting for him to bring one out on reversing hair loss.
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I've found that London Camera Exchange is pretty good for second hand cameras and is willing to haggle. I bought my Lumix bridge camera from them eighteen years ago. It had been dropped by somebody else looking at it in the shop so had a scratch on the image cover so I got it for a little over half price. I then traded it in for my son's Nikon for his birthday a couple of years ago as he's doing GCSE photography. If he doesn't take it to A level and loses interest in it...I might try to buy it off him. I met a wildlife photographer a few months ago who showed me some fantastic
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Forgot to mention in the last post that a couple of days ago I saw a buzzard and kite circling in the same thermal. I initially thought I was misidentifying one of them but it was definitely one of each.
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Good point. My first thought had been the obvious "I'll get a lab then..." because every thread I read about advice on gundogs is always heavily laden with "Don't be daft; just get a lab. It'll be so much easier." But there's something about the HPRs that I like. Can't quite put my finger on it. I forgot to add in my first post that, for me, one of the advantages of the cross bred rather than a pure gundog would be that I'd "understand" them better after a quarter of a century of getting to know them. No rush yet. Noggin is slowing down considerably (shorts walks only now) but
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Thanks, I'll take a look.
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To start off, I wasn't sure where to put this, so feel free to move it to gundogs or wherever. There's been quite a lot of talk recently about individuals stopping using lurchers and moving to slower mooching, bushing etc dogs. I moved from lurchers to kelpies (as some of you will know) in 2000. However, recently, several people I know have told me that (partly because of the obedience level of my dogs and partly because of my temperament) they think I'd suit a gundog. I must admit that, although I still enjoy catching the occasional pest, I get a lot more enjoyment out of simply w
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Those red kites are definitely heading south. The first time I saw one was north of Basingstoke I think. A few years ago I started seeing them within a day's walk of my house (south of the South Downs). Last week there were six flying over the garden, all heading south.
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The debate last night reminded me of a cross between the aftermath of the reign of Henry VIII and a kids birthday party. You had Angela and Penny as Mary and Elizabeth, squabbling over everything and nothing. Nigel as Edward the petulant brat who thinks he knows everything and shouts over the top of everybody. Meanwhile, the remaining four seemed like slightly embarrassed parents thinking, "why is it always my kids that show me up in public?"
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That's the real reason we take the dogs out. Because if we didn't, we wouldn't see things like that.
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I've not seen or heard one in Hampshire for about eighteen years. As you say, the only ones I see (and hear) now are on Dartmoor.
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Good luck Ray. Hope you're feeling a lot better soon. Take it easy, but not too easy.
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I've got a pair of those individual toe socks (injinji?) but I hardly ever wear them as they take simply ages to put on. The vivobarefoot tracker esc leather boots I mentioned earlier in the thread have been brilliant. I like them so much that, when I noticed them on sale on their website, I bought a second back-up pair. Comfy, lightweight, great grip. I don't think they'd be much good for digging to a ferret though. Ouch!
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Completely agree. My wife has travelled a lot (including a year in one of the kibbutz which was recently attacked and a year as a teacher in Japan) but I never get the urge. Even after watching Race Around the World and thinking "Wow! I'd love to do that," I still thought "but there are so many amazing places in the British Isles I've not seen yet."
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My wife and daughter are constantly buying cheap crap on that site. I keep trying to point out that a) they're probably aiding child exploitation and b) helping to close down UK shops but she just says, "But it's SO cheap!"
