Hannah & Leo in Langholm

 A very smart Hannah in her new coat and boots

Leo just loves feeding the ducks

Hannah the Bird Girl

 Hannah's first full day of her Langholm holiday has started by spending time looking at birds. First stop was the Kilngreen to feed the ducks. Some of the ducks in the photograph below are not the usual Mallards and they are much tamer and greedier that the others. I think Tootlepedal mentioned them on his blog a few weeks ago so maybe he will kindly identify them for me.  

 After we had fed the ducks we went to the Moorland Feeding Station on the Lower Tarras road where Dr. Cat Barlow was ringing birds with the help of 3 volunteers from Langholm Academy. In the above photograph Cat is releasing a small bird from the mist net.

 This beautiful bird is a Tree Sparrow

 Hannah inspects a Coal Tit

 This was the best bird we caught. It is a Spotted Woodpecker and was very noisy and managed to bite Cat several times.

Hannah strokes a young Chaffinch

Yorkshire Dales

 We have just spent a lovely couple of days with Sandra & Bob and Robert & Margaret at Reeth in Swaledale, Yorkshire.

 This is Sandra & Bob's beautiful holiday cottage in Reeth. If any of my Blog Friends wants to hire it next year then please contact me as their will be special rates to friends of friends and it is in a beautiful little town. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and is very nice.

 The Toilet Girls on an old out door bog in Reeth. Sandra, Gaye, and Margaret have been friends since their days at DO School in Glasgow.

 The White House on the side of the hill seen from Sandra & Bob's house is my Cousin Hilary's house so we spent time with Hilary & her Husband John and Daughter Meg up here on Tuesday morning. Meg I am delighted to say calls Gaye and I Auntie Gaye and Uncle Gavin and we are really delighted about this. Meg and her Partner Trevor live in Reeth with their two lovely boys Sam, & Tom. 

 The White House

John with his tame Ferret 

Lang Sandy

Yesterdays walk was a nice easy low level one round the Canonbie walk. We soon ran into problems as there were about 20 cattle on the path next to the river near the "Meeting of the Waters" where the Liddel and the Esk meet. We had to shorten our walk to avoid them and I have reported the farmer to the Acess officer at D & G Council as it looks as if they had been deliberately put there and it is a dangerous situation for walkers. We lunched at Lang Sandy at Rowanburn and managed to complete the walk with hardly a drop of rain.

Eleanor & Thomas

 Eleanor with that wonderful smile usually after she has done something mischevious.

 She loves her little brother.

Thomas usually smiles but this is him in a more serious pose.

John's Birthday Walk (At Long Last)

John's birthday walk was originally planned for mid August but had to be cancelled at the last minute as John had a sickness bug. It was re scheduled for 5th October and right up to Tuesday night the weather forecast looked as if we would have to cancel. We however decided to give it a go as the forecast told us it would be rain in the morning but brighten up in the afternoon. The walk was a 12 mile circuit in the Pentland Hills just outside Edinburgh. The first 6 miles of the walk was dry but very windy and this part of the walk had us with the wind in our faces. We had lunch in the Bird Hide shown below at the Bavelaw Marsh and just as we arrived the heavens opened. The forecast had been totally wrong so for the remainder of the walk the driving rain hit us but at least we were now walking with the wind at our backs.

 Martin, John, and Tom at the hide on Bavelaw Marsh.

 The bird hide was a great place to have lunch and we were entertained by the many birds on view.

Threipmuir Reservoir.