Saturday morning, I'll be heading to the farmers' market at Oundle, Cambridgeshire with a few friends. They sell some nice pies (I like a nice pie) and big blocks of stilton that I'm reliably informed can go in the freezer. They're so big you're never going to finish one in a hurry. Which reminds me - am I the only person who thinks hot, melted stilton on toast (with a little tomato ketchup kicker) is better than the mating game? Hmmm... Anyway...
My favourite part of visiting Oundle is that the skies are full of these things:
Milvus milvus - the red kite Google image - labelled for reuse with modification
These birds were once near extinct in Great Britain. At least, in the early 1990s, when I was a student up North. I'd never seen one, I didn't know what they looked like. Then, shortly after relocating to Cambridgeshire just over a year ago, a friend took me to visit Oundle - she drove. As we were driving along the A-road that leads to Oundle, I saw an act of piracy. A gull was being attacked by a raptor for the food it was carrying. Looking at the colour of it (it was reddish-brown), I knew instantly it was like no bird of prey I'd ever seen and that it had to be a red kite.
The journey home that day was just as eventful, ornithologically speaking. A heron (another bird I absolutely adore) flew parallel to the car for about 50 metres, inches away from my passenger seat window. After we shook that off, twice we passed solitary red kites scanning the dual carriageway for carrion (their dives are slow, so they mostly eat prey already dead - there's a lot of roadkill, isn't there? - or commit piracy as noted above).
So, I read up on the subject when I got home. It so happens there were feeding stations set up in Wales and then one was also set up in Cambridgeshire. Presumably, very close to Oundle as I've seen flocks of the bird circling the picturesque village at the time of the year when they become that little bit more sociable. So, the bird is 'recovering'.
I've since seen them circling over my house (I'm fifteen miles from Oundle) and once I was certain one was riding the thermal created by the cheminée being full of glowing embers.
They've got to be one of my very favourite birds now but I do see them too often these day for sightings to be special. Bah, humbug.
Gorgeous birds. Here's one in attack mode courtesy of youtube
After Oundle, there's a choice between joining a gym (which I'll be doing any day now and am really looking forward to) or I'll be taking a Canadian teacher friend of mine for Margaritas. He's probably a bit miserable that he had to fly back to work after his holiday at home in Canada, poor lad. So he needs a little alcohol therapy, I guess.
Oh, and there's a full fixture list of premier league football where I'll have a few fantasy football concerns to worry over.
Somebody needs to defeat Man City (they're unbeaten all season in the prem). My team are probably the team best equipped to do so and we host them on Sunday. A 4 pm (GMT) kick-off, it should be a great game - not to be missed. Two of the very best attacking forces in Europe going for each other's throats?
Steemit friends - Got any special plans of your own for the weekend?