The first Storks of the year have arrived, a flock of 20+ landed in the field opposite my house.

It gives the dogs something to shout at!!

I saw one yesterday while driving up to the farm...meant I could get rid of the annoying Martinitsa at last.

How did you get on with your fence?

Not seen one yet but when we leave the village I am sure we will see them as there is a big nest on the outskirts.

Believe it or not, storks are a great indication of the weather...they are almost exactly one week earlier this year, at least in my area. Over the years I've lived here, I've watched them closely...we are lucky to live smack dab in the centre of a main migratory bird route and get to see all manner of birds who take summer or winter holidays...storks are only one breed of many who pass my door, or stay for a while, as the case may be.

Lucky you. Mind you we do get lot of birds in our area too, we hear the geese fly over, lovely to sit in the garden and just listen to the woodpecker and the cookoo and several other birds I don't know but they sound fantatic. There is a beautiful black and yellow bird in the trees, he/she is quite big no idea what it is but beautiful to look at. Also seen a few squirels one black and one grey. The neighbours said the black squirel is a (sounds like) yorkiebear ie a polecat. He was the chap that was getting into our roof until we cut the wire he walk across on.

The yellow bird is likely to be a Golden Oriole, we have a number of them which nest along our creek each year.

Your dark, wire walking visitor sounds very much like a polecat (ferret)...we have one residing in our roof too. The one advantage of having him there is you will never see or hear rats or mice around the home. He is quite used to us now and can often be seen, sunning himself on the roof.


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thank you so much Bazz that is lovely. The polecat was burring his way through the roof, to be honest at one stage we half expected to see him and his family in the living room watching tv on our return to BG

Thankfully we have ever see a mouse or rat around although when Nipper was a pup he was playing with a mouse outside the gate but I think he ate him.

We do have a problem with ladybirds ie African beetles and those smelly beetles they must have nested in the roof. The upstairs showroom seems to have 3 or 6 daily now I don't know how they get in. We put plastic then insulated and plastered boarded the roof from inside, they put a think artext wallpaper on the ceiling so it beats me how they get in. I spray daily now. The balcony upstairs is a graveyard obviously not fly in with the plastic covering in the balcony they come through the wood pannelling in from the roof, again I spray daily and brush up every evening. When the plastic fames come off from the balcony we will have to life the tiles and spray inside the roof. Before we insulated from the inside, we had tong and grove on the ceilings and nothing above that apart from reeds so when we got back to BG from our stay in the UK the upstairs was like a grave yard 1000's of them. Luckely we always cover everything with plastic before we leave to keep dust off. This was a good idea because when we had the burglers for the 4th time they tried to get in through the roof, so lifted and stacked all the tiles on one side then found they could not get in so just left. When we came over in the summer found the bedroom floor was soaked so had to take it up. luckly the bed and furniture had metal legs and was covered with plastic so no damage.

The link I sent for the Oriole isn't very good...try this one. When he is really in the mood, he comes out with the 'tweedle deedle' sound.
The female has a different song, often sounding a bit like an angry Magpie...sort of a 'scrartch' sound.


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Just a little tale about the Polecats. We seem to live in a place where they are reasonably common and the locals actually like them (so do I, but that's another story) and they are quick to tell you that these animals never kill their prey close to where they live. They have a reputation for killing chickens (hens) and they usually do it under the cover of darkness...they sneak up and bite the heads off...and they usually will eat only the brain of the hen...that's why they will kill more than one at a time. If you keep hens, like we do, and a Polecat comes to live with you...YOUR BIRDS ARE QUITE SAFE! He might go down the street and kill your neighbours birds, but he won't touch yours. We've had our guy in residence for a couple of years and while we normally keep around 50 hens, we've never lost a single one. They also don't do their 'business' close to where they live, so there is no smell or mess to deal with.

A few years ago ( well before our guy took up residence) we were visiting a friend who lived on the other side of our village...sat outside in the garden enjoying a beer, when Dinko pointed out a Polecat slinking along the top of his fence...when it reached his next door neighbours house, it just seemed to glide up the wall and vanished under the eaves. I reckon it took about 10 seconds until the house seemed to explode!! I've never seen so many rats in a hurry to escape. Dinko just laughed and said "if every house had a Polecat, there would be no more rats in town"...I thought he was joking, but now I reckon he knew what he was talking about.

There you go...another interesting tit bit.

And just to add some more, allowing for the different dialects...this animal is called ' Neverstoolka' or ' Poorrr'. (roll your rrrrrs).

Ah saw the stoke on our way out of the village standing in his/her nest. So off comes the bracelets

justbazz wrote:

I saw one yesterday while driving up to the farm...meant I could get rid of the annoying Martinitsa at last.

How did you get on with your fence?

The fence has been belayed for a short while due to various reasons, but when the weather breaks for a while it will be fingers to the metal.

justbazz wrote:

I saw one yesterday while driving up to the farm...meant I could get rid of the annoying Martinitsa at last.

you dont have to wear them...they are not obligitory !!!!! :)

varnagirl wrote:

justbazz wrote:

I saw one yesterday while driving up to the farm...meant I could get rid of the annoying Martinitsa at last.

you dont have to wear them...they are not obligitory !!!!!   :)

No choice here VG the ladies just put them on and tell you to leave until you see a stork, it would upset them greatly if we took them off.... Bulgarian elderly folk are really very supersticious.  So just to keep the peace and keep them happy go along with them.

People in this area are sticklers for tradition...you get some weird looks if you aren't 'displaying'