New look for the blog

I wasted almost an entire day today, just giving my blog a face-lift. I suddenly decided that I couldn't bear looking at the old one a moment longer. It last had a revamp in 2010 so it was about time.

These (ETA: I mean the new pictures at the edges of the blog, not showing in this post) are the most up-to-date photos of our woodland babies; one of last year's fawns from this morning, and I think the squirrel is a mother-to-be, because I've seen her buttons when she's been raiding the bird-feeder. We had to buy a new seed feeder for the birds on Sunday because when DH looked out of the window, the old one had gone. Not just been emptied, but physically vanished. I went and had a squelch and a slip and a slide around the swamp that is our back garden at the moment, and under the spruce tree I found a perch, and the handle, neatly bitten in two pieces. And that was all. No plastic tube, no base, or the other perch. Something or things had robbed it very efficiently.

That gave us a lovely excuse to go to our favourite big garden centre to get another one, a squirrel-proof one this time. DH said "aaah, poor squirrel" but they've been emptying their own feeder at the rate of half a bag of monkey-nuts a day - and burying them in the lawn. I'll be astonished if they can find them again.

We've had Mr and Mrs Pheasant picking their way up and down the grass as well, displaying and ignoring respectively. They are looking magnificent at this time of year. And I saw a pretty fierce robin fight in the acer yesterday, so despite the dingy weather, it's all happening out there.