Cut off at Christmas
I don’t think I’ve ever had a less indulgent pre-Christmas week than this year. I have more-or-less recovered from whatever it was that afflicted me, except that whenever I go out into the cold I seem to start coughing again so I haven’t been out much. I decided to lay off the booze until I felt fully back to normal, with the result that I haven’t had any alcoholic drinks at all for over a week. I have also been eating very little and nothing at all of a festive richness for which I have no appetite. I will however have a proper Christmas dinner, even if I have to force myself.
Pottering around in the garden the other day I was a bit sad to find a dead bird in the garden, a young starling. I’ve tried hard to keep my feathered friends going through the cold weather, by putting out various kinds of food in an assortment of feeders, but this one alas didn’t make it.
The weather is much milder than last week (when it was positively Baltic) though we have had sleet and fog today. There is still a steady stream of birds looking for food, among them a robin that actually manages to perch on the feeder to eat. I’ve never seen a robin succeed in doing that before. The robins usual stay at ground level and collect bits that fall from on high.
Normally I get quite a few items of post at Christmas from the UK, but not this year. The postal strikes have put paid to that. Among other things I was hoping to have a go at the usual bumper Christmas Private Eye crossword, but my subscription copy has not arrived. Lots of other things haven’t arrived either, including some financial documents that will tell me when I can afford to retire. I suppose that calculation will just have to wait.
Quite a lot of Open Journal business for 2022 is still pending but it seems authors, referees and editors have now all pulled down the shutters for the break. I guess all that will have to wait until the New Year too…
In the Dark 
December 23, 2022 at 5:17 pm
Happy post-winter-solstice!
I too, had a bad cough and it was accompanied by some waves of fever. When I had a negative Covid at-home test I decided to accompany my family to a winter cabin outing. My cough got worse and when I got home a few days later I got a text that one person in the party had just tested positive for Covid. So I retested and I was positive as was my spouse. Now I am doing a round of Paxlovid anti-virals (its side-effects are almost as bad as the disease — but the statistics say to stay the course). All family Xmas plans had to be cancelled. I also feel very guilty about infecting others. I had received all 4 vaccinations and boosters available to me, but I have an old, weak immune system.
We are seeing Starlings at our bird feeders for the first time ever. They are an alien species here in Minnesota, USA, but all are hungry in our cold, snowy weather and welcome.
December 24, 2022 at 10:21 am
We have robins in the garden and they can access the bird feeders. The impressive ones are the magpies, who manage to somehow hold on to the bird feeder (while flapping their wings) and get at the food. They are very intelligent birds – brain-to-mass ratios similar to apes, apparently. They have worked out how to get the top off my peanut feeder to get at the peanuts easier.
Finding dead birds in the garden is not pleasant but a fact of life when you have bird feeders and hence lots of visitors!