Here are some more squirrel photos from the town centre. A lot of the squirrels have become quite fat - it looks like people have been feeding them a lot recently.
A Messy Eater
Squirrel busy hunting for peanuts.
Walking past Holy Trinity churchyard, I saw a squirrel up a tree 'flapping' its tail and making a screeching noise. I noticed that it had a nut in its mouth and at first thought it was stuck and couldn't get it out. The squirrel ran up and down the tree and across the grass before it finally buried the nut. The nut wasn't stuck, the squirrel was simply being over protective.
Feeding the squirrels in the city centre, near Holy Trinity Church.
The squirrel seemed more interested in the bag rather than the nut being offered.
I was trying to get a photo of the squirrel running towards me but it leapt out of the way at the last moment.
We've got a new roborovski hamster, to replace Alysia (aka Big Silly), who died on saturday, aged 2½.
We haven't decided on a name yet. She's been living with Ruby (aka Babykin) for a day now and they've been getting along well so far.
We obtained some Bobwhite Quail last weekend. During the week we built another quail run for them to live in - this means we've lost even more of the garden now. If we want to sit out, there's a small area between the quail and the vegetables.
The bobwhites make an interesting sound - they sometimes sound like an old shortwave radio being tuned in.
First stop: The Domestic Fowl Trust. We went there earlier this year but Emma wanted to go back and feed the animals again. This backfired when we got to the Rhea, which decided it wanted to eat her finger and didn't want to let go.
We stopped at a nearby 13th century thatched pub for lunch.
We drove into Evesham and went around the Almonry museum and garden. It was larger than we were expecting on the inside, and it took a couple of hours to walk around.
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The National Hamster Council had a Hamster Display at the show. This allowed members of the public to handle hamsters and discuss animal ownership and welfare. We went to help out, and had an interesting time talking to people in the display tent. We also managed to go out into the rest of the show to go around some of the stalls and events.
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Orna's babies are proper tiny hamsters now, rather than the pink blobs in the original photograph.
We had to be very careful taking the early photos. You shouldn't disturb the nest or touch the babies because if the mother detects a 'foreign' scent, she might believe the babies are under threat from a predator, and she's likely to eat them. We have heard stories of this happening to other hamsters, and we didn't want it to happen to ours.
At about day 11, their eyes started to open and they became more active - although some had escaped from the nest and been exploring before then. Now (day 13), they are very active and leave the nest quite often.
The final photo also has a picture of one of the 3 quail chicks which have hatched so far this weekend.
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Coventry City Farm is being forced to close soon, due to lack of funds. At the moment it is still open and they are accepting donations so they can still afford to feed the animals. While we were there, we lent our support by dropping some money in the collection box and also by buying a few things from the shop.
Some enormous pigs.
Photos from the Domestic Fowl Trust, near Evesham. They have lots of different types of birds, including chickens, turkeys and guinea fowl. Some of the more unusual chickens included Seabright (their feathers look like they've had outlines drawn on them with marker pens), Silkies (very soft fluffy feathers). There were also some enormous cockerels (not including the 7ft model in the museum).
While we were in the area, we decided to visit a few other places. Broadway was a picturesque Cotswold village, but not somewhere to spend a lot of time. We couldn't find an affordable pub lunch or anywhere to buy a newspaper, so we left and drove towards Evesham.
Along the way we stopped at the Wayside Farm Shop. We bought a few bottles of cider, including some traditional scrumpy.
Next stop was Evesham for lunch and a quick look around the town before driving home.
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Here are some recent animal photos, mainly the Quail chicks and a few hamster pics.
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I thought I'd collect together any useful pet related web sites, mainly ones to do with pets we own (at the moment: hamsters, degus and quail). I'll add more sites to the list as and when when I find any.
- Hamster Heaven. This site has a very active forum, where a lot of experienced hamster owners discuss hamster ownership.
- Degu Rock - website about Degus, also has a forum.
- Coturnix Corner. A forum for Quail owners.
- Emma's Hamster Wiki.
Whenever we have a loaf of bread which has started to go dry, we usually take it to work to feed to the ducks and geese by the lake. We had the dry crusts from the ends of the loaf and took them with us today.
Alongside the usual ducks, there were a couple of grey geese which didn't seem to be interested in the bread. They clustered around us while we fed the ducks but they didn't eat. One of them kept looking up into the sky, as if it could see something.
I turned round to see what it was looking at, but I couldn't see anything in the air behind me.
Just in case any of our parents are reading, earlier today we didn't go to the RSPCA. We didn't get 2 degus and bring them home. We didn't put them in an enormous cage which Emma didn't buy and which doesn't take up most of the living room.
We haven't called them Remy and Emile, after the rats in the film Ratatouille.
Remy (with Emile in the background)
Emile
The Degus had originally been confiscated from a pet shop in the Birmingham area. They had been kept in overcrowded conditions and there had been some fighting. This is probably how Emile lost the tip of his tail.
Remy sometimes sits very still and acts as if he can't see you. The staff at the RSPCA thought he might be blind but most of the time he seems ok. It's as if he has occasional absence seizures which stop if you pick him up.
Emma recently bought an incubator so we could try to hatch some quail. They were expected to hatch on Christmas Day but last night we could see a beak starting to peck its way out of one of the eggs.
Sadly this morning there was no movement from the egg - it looks like that quail was too premature and too weak to hatch. There was another egg which looked like it was starting to hatch though.
When we came downstairs about an hour later, there were two chicks wandering around the bottom of the incubator.
Around lunchtime, a 3rd chick hatched. It looks like our first attempt at hatching quail has been reasonably successful so far.
