Some decent weekend weather presented us with our first attempt at entertaining, in the garden of course, since lockdown was eased. Four of us gathered to share a barbecued shoulder of lamb.

On most occasions when I used to travel in the States on business, I did so alone. I was in Richmond, Virginia many times and on one visit I had turned up to a restaurant but had to wait for a table to become available. I sat at the bar waiting. Eventually I heard myself being paged over the intercom:

Franco, party of one …

One hardly constitutes a party, I thought; that was after I had also thought “Oh, how embarrassing”. Still, four can definitely constitute a party in these strained times.This, of course, meant we had lamb shoulder bones for our visiting wildlife. I put them out at 23:00.

The new set of batteries in Foxcam worked; the video clips are back to a consistent length.

Good ol’ fox-formerly-known-as-Limpy pitched up at 01:25 and was in the garden working on the bones for 40 minutes. I’d actually trimmed some excess fat off and had put those pieces out, too. Limpy munched those first and eventually, once again, juggled both the knuckle bone and the blade bone into his mouth at once. He wandered around carrying his prize but returned to paw the ground where, I suspect, a few scraps remained.

Headlights the Badger put in an appearance at 02:30. He trotted around the garden but by now all the offerings had gone. When I tried putting peanuts out for any passing badgers I discovered that foxes like peanuts, too. Foxes tend to be earlier so the badger tends to get nothing.

The fox with the curiously misshaped brush wandered through at 04:20. We got a better profile of the shape of the tail this time. I’m still not convinced that this is Ratty with the brush growing back. This profile shows the muzzle markings and they seem different to me, as well as the fox looking slighter.

Come to that, the brush tip (what there is of it) looks a different colour, too.

Our pair of Great Tits appear to have finished nest building. Now, something different and, perhaps, more entertaining is going on.

We have patio furniture beneath the nest box – away from the house wall but basically beneath the box. I had recently spotted one of the Great Tits, I think the male, perching on the back of one of the chairs chirping occasionally. He would sometimes change position to another chair back, or the table, and chirp again. This behaviour  went on for several minutes.

Yesterday the same thing happened twice, once around lunchtime and again in the early evening, which is when these pictures were taken through a not-entirely-clean kitchen window. The chirping male frequently glanced up at the nest box. Once or twice he even flew up to the box then returned to his perch. On both occasions, the episode finished when the partner flew out of the nest box.

Here’s our theory, which may be total rubbish. 🙂

We suspect that this happens when Mrs. Great Tit visits the nest to lay an egg. Mr. Great Tit agitatedly paces around outside the delivery room like an expectant father, keeps in verbal touch and every now and then pops his head around the door to check on progress. Eventually Mrs. Great Tit gets through with her task and flies off to brew up another.

We know that swans, for example, lay an egg a day for up to seven days before sitting on the completed clutch to begin incubation. Egg development doesn’t start until they are brought up to a certain temperature by being incubated. We think that’s what’s going on here.

I’ve been foxed by British-bloody-Summer-Time. There’s often some timepiece that one forgets to adjust. Why must we change the clocks? Midday, 12:00, is when the sun is at its height, for Darwin’s sake. Making midday an hour past the zenith makes no sense.

I’d been through my stills cameras, my proper cameras with decent optics, adjusting them but I forgot to reset foxcam. No matter, it was hardly calamitous. It’s just that I though fox-formerly-known-as-Limpy had turned up particularly early at 21:40. Then I realized that I hadn’t even put the chicken carcass out until 22:00. DUH! 😀

So, fox-formerly-known-as-Limpy pitched up at 22:40, attracted by the smell of a luscious, free range, Dutchy organic chicken carcass courtesy of Waitrose. I’m still trying to make up for the unidentified frying objects containing pork slurry from Aldi. Here he is and said luscious, free range, Dutchy organic chicken carcass is to his left.

A while later foxcam, still too early for BST, caught Limpy wandering around the garden with the entire luscious, free range, Dutchy organic chicken carcass firmly clamped in his jaws. He wandered towards Foxcam. Not content with his mouthful, he attempted to pick up a supplementary piece of chicken which I imagine must have been a winglet. I think he actually managed it; very dextrous. [Can one be dextrous with a mouth? Just a thought.]

At 02:40 FAT [Foxcam Adjusted Time] Headlights the Badger turned up, tripping the infrared light fantastic until it decided to dump its bum on the so-called grass for a spot of scent marking/peeing. Much relieved, it presented itself to foxcam quite nicely thereafter.

The night wasn’t over yet. Another fox, with a very differently shaped tail, turned up at 04:50 FAT. About one third of the way down, the brush looked pinched, much less full. We had seen a very distinctive fox that we called Ratty with a very scrappy tail many weeks ago. We haven’t seen it since. Our first thought was that this new fox could’ve been Ratty with the fur on the tail growing back. I’m not convinced, though – this fox looks slighter, less heavily built. A mystery.

Foxcam had been recording seemingly random length video clips for the first time, not the 20s I’d set. Sure that this was nothing to do with having forgotten BST, I contacted NatureSpy, the suppliers. They suggested this is the first sign that the batteries are running low, even though the battery condition indicator looks fine. I’ll change ‘em.

[Insert your very own schoolboy comment here – you know you’re thinking it.]

Last year our trusty old wooden nest box was used, as usual, by a pair of Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus). We could hear the chicks chattering away inside in between feeding visits by the parents. Unfortunately, for the first time that we’d noticed, at least one of our resident Great Spotted Woodpeckers (Dendrocopos major) became very interested and started chipping away at the wooden box.

Well, there’s nothing like a pair of tits to get a pecker interested. [There, not wishing to disappoint readers that’s my schoolboy comment.]

GSWs are well known for attacking smaller birds’ nests. We sent off for a tailor-made metal plate designed to reinforce the entrance hole of the box and I glued thicker pieces of wood onto the sides and front for added protection  – our determined woodpecker was chipping away at the sides, as well as the front. The result was not pretty but it did serve its purpose and the clutch of Blue Tit chicks fledged successfully. Happily my meddling didn’t deter the parents.

We needed a new nest box and preferably one that was armoured. We finally settled on a Vivara Pro Seville [yikes] 32mm nest box made from a composite material called WoodStone, which I got from the Natural History Book Service. NHBS broadened from its beginnings as a bookshop into a wildlife equipment supplier. Our smart new box arrived and felt more like concrete; very strong.

Until recently we’d been disappointed that, though our garden remained full of birds feeding, none seemed to be showing any interest in the smart new nest box. Maybe it was too smart and needed to weather a bit?

Apparently not; we were relieved this week when disinterest changed and a pair of Great Tits (Parus major) took possession, ferrying in nest material furiously. This was very exciting; we’d always had Blue Tits before so Great Tits would make an interesting change.

Foxcam had to be repurposed. [Puke!]

I set the camera on its tripod on top of our patio table and aimed it at the nesting box. It managed to snag a couple of shots, though the birds were too fast most of the time and eluded Titcam, which is a bit slow to trigger. Here’s one of our Great Tits entering, though it’s dropped a few bits of nesting material in squeezing through the hole.

Nest building continues apace. We saw both adults gathering material from our “lawn” (I use the term loosely), though that was soon used up and they ventured further afield.

No, not gentle, gentile.

I’d made a complete mess of both ovens roasting a loin of pork in one and attempting to cook the skin separately in the other to get crackling. Cooking the skin separately is a technique I’d seen Jamie Oliver suggest but, whilst I did get crispy crackling, it was not the tastiest on the planet. This could, of course, have been the fault of the poor old pig. For whatever reason, the net result was that I not only had substandard crackling but also double the ovens to clean. I’m going to stop roasting. 😀

The pork bones went out with the ribs separated from the backbone section.

At 23:00 one of our local badgers put in an appearance. This was the Badger with a complete complement of two eyes piercing the darkness. I’m not confident about being able to identify individual badgers, at least those with both eyes functioning, though I did read that identification is possible via their tail patterns. I had a go and this one looks as though it could have been the one we saw previously.

We hadn’t previously seen a Badger take any food. One-eyed Broc had investigated bits of lamb but had rejected them. So, I was a little surprised when two-eyed Headlights grabbed one of the pork ribs and, after securing a grip, scarpered with it, stage right. Let’s try a video for something a bit different – it should show a turn of speed.

Badgers may be chunky beasts, weighing up to 12kg but slow they are not. Headlights soon returned for more. It sniffed at and eventually managed to get a grip on the slab of pork that was the backbone – well, half the backbone, to be accurate. It looked quite comical with it sticking out of one side of its mouth. Clearly this badger was not Jewish.

At 02:50 our latest poor fox, All New Limpy, turned up again; poor not just because of its obviously damaged left rear leg/foot but also because Headlights the badger had polished off all the food. Foxy sniffed around at, I presume, scent left behind on the grass [I use the term loosely] but hobbled off with nothing. Since stills don’t do much to show a limp, we’ll try another video clip.

From a sadly missed and prominent atheist, the late, great Douglas Adams …

… nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, …

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was published in 1979 so now the timing is a little off; it is now over 2,000 years since this tragic event. It wasn’t the nailing of a man to a tree that was tragic, it’s the fact that what ensued was bloody Easter, a starting pistol for irrational behaviour.

Satan’s Little Disciples had been stuffed back in school for a mere two weeks before they were let back out again for another two free weeks to terrorize the world. Haven’t they missed enough schooling already?

That’s normal for Easter, of course but in another couple of respects, this Easter has seemed less than usual.

Francine popped into Waitrose on Good Friday [good?] and failed to find a shoulder of lamb. Mind you, it was the afternoon so no alarm bells yet rang. Easter Sunday was forecast to be sunny so some barbecued lamb sounded appealing. No matter, I thought, I’ll pop into our local butcher early on Saturday morning and get one. Wrong. Apart from one small scrap, the butcher was out of lamb entirely. ¿Que?

Meanwhile, back at Waitrose, there were actually two legs of lamb on their shelves so we lashed out on a mortgage for one of those instead. What the heck, we’re not able to spend the money on travel so let’s treat ourselves. Lamb sorted.

What was now missing from the Waitrose shelves were any Easter eggs. I recall surplus Easter eggs being sold off after any normal Easter but here we were, before Easter Sunday, with none. What was going on? Maybe the bog roll bandits had switched their attention to choccy eggs? Maybe the shops – Waitrose anyway – had stocked less in this blasted pandemic? Maybe the countless pages of forms necessitated by bloody Brexit to get decent European chocolate into the country had not been correctly submitted?

Tell you what, let’s just cancel Easter altogether. Now you’re talking.

Sadly I’m stuck with Easter but at least our barbecued leg of lamb was excellent; I even treated it to being studded with garlic and rosemary. This meant that we had a lamb leg bone left over for foxy.

In preparation for retiring early to read, I put the bone out quite early (21:30) so the first visitor was a blasted black and white cat who licked at it but seemed otherwise unable to make any headway.

Happily, just over an hour later at 22:45, a fox entered stage right. Now I have a real dilemma – had this been a TV program this would’ve been called All New Limpy. This fox looked like a new one to our camera. It has almost no dark muzzle markings and its legs appear less strongly marked with black. The poor creature was really using only three of those legs, the rear left leg being held off the ground for most of the time. [Original Limpy had favoured the front left leg which now looks fixed.]

All New Limpy hobbled over, eventually picking up both sections of the lamb bone [I’d divided it at the joint] and carried them off behind one of our bushes presumably to have a chew in peace.

Maybe these foxes are a bit like the lion with Androcles in that they get thorns in their paws? Alternatively, perhaps a close shave with a car could be to blame? Either way, this was certainly a much worse limp than original Limpy had ever had.

After much of the day spent painting the lounge ceiling in a fresh coat of brilliant white matt emulsion, Midsomer Murders proved boring [ 😀 ] so I retired early to read. On the way, I put out the remnants of a lamb shoulder and, hoping to see a badger, a pile of peanuts … unsalted, of course – we don’t want badgers wandering around looking for a pint. Actually, these were the birds’ peanuts so I hope they don’t mind sharing.

Incidentally, I’ve been trying out roasting bags in an attempt to keep the oven clean. Our lamb shoulder was cooked at 160°C/gas 2½ for 90 minutes, then I split the bag open along the top and wacked the oven up to 200°C/gas 6 for 30 minutes more to try and crisp the skin up a little. It didn’t work. The keeping clean part works but sadly the roasting part doesn’t work. The food is cooked perfectly well and remains moist but roast, it ain’t. The other problem is that the cooking juices stick to the inside bottom of the roasting bag so you cannot deglaze the pan for any gravy/sauce [depending upon how posh you feel]. Back to oven cleaning … what a thrill.

I was surprised to see that we’d captured a fox’s early visit shortly after 21:30. I was even more surprised when we realized that this was not our [fox formerly known as] Limpy; we haven’t seen any other fox for some time. This was the fox I’d tagged Sleek. He/she has a larger, more prominent white tip to its brush with more extensive black markings on the muzzle. Not many of the frames show a clear picture ‘cos it moves around so much.

Limpy did pitch up shortly before midnight but the lamb had gone, snaffled by our earlier visitor. Limpy did manage to tuck into the peanuts, though. They really are quite distinct – the foxes, I mean, not the peanuts, all peanuts look much the same. 😀 Well, not peanuts with salt on compared to unsalted, obviously. And [taking lessons from the BBC on starting sentences with a conjunction] dry roasted peanuts look quite different  … not even much like peanuts. 😀

But strewth, the blasted BBC even starts whole new paragraphs with conjunctions these days. What has happened to the former guardians of the English language?

Well, OK, it’s not really a rooster, it’s really Ramsay’s Roast Chicken but that would ruin my alliteration.

These days we perform the same transformation on the classic French dish, Coq au Vin. As those remaining few of my fellow countrymen not averse to Europeans probably know, the French word for chicken is poulet; coq refers to a [male] cock and one of more advanced age at that. Hence the traditional Coq au Vin recipe gently simmering for 2½ hours or so. [Cockerel, I’ve now discovered, is jeune coq.] These days we actually cook what should be called Poulet au Vin and for half the amount of time to avoid completely destroying the more delicate poulet. But I digress.

In addition to loving chicken, I am a big fan both of chorizo sausage and of cannellini beans, which are the prince of pulses [gosh, more alliteration] IMO. So, when I spotted a recipe that stuffs a chicken with this combination I wanted to try it for a bit of midweek entertainment. Thus, back to paraphrasing Ramsay’s Roast Chicken.

1. Fry off 100g of skinned chorizo cubes.
2. Chuck in a diced onion and two chopped garlic cloves until softened.
3. Whack in some thyme leaves with a tin of cannellini beans [sans tin, obviously 😀 – Gordon actually used two tins but he had a BIG chicken] and warm them through …
4. … before adding 100g garlicky and herby Unearthed slow-roasted tomatoes [again, Gordon used 200g of semi-dried/sun-blushed tomatoes but see previous comment concerning the size of his coq].
5. Stuff as much of this mixture as will fit into the seasoned cavity of your chicken …
6. … before performing the final indignity of ramming a whole lemon up its arse to hold everything in place. [Some string around the legs and parson’s nose may help secure the now distended package.]
7. Sit the hapless chicken in a roasting tray with 200ml white wine, 100ml water and several sprigs of thyme. [Drink the remaining wine.]
8. In an attempt to make up for the lemon indignity, oil the chicken and lovingly massage 1tsp paprika into its breasts, apologizing for the lemon as you go, before adding the essential pepper and salt.
9. Cover the roasting tray with foil, sealed as well as possible, and steam the lot in a 180°C/gas 4 oven for an hour.
10. Remove the foil, increase the temperature to 200°C/gas 6 and brown the chicken off for 25 mins [that’s assuming the poor chicken isn’t thoroughly browned-off already, having been sexually assaulted with a whole lemon and paprika rub].
11. Remove the lemon and allow the now relieved chicken to rest while you make the sauce.
12. Gordon squeezed the lemon juice into the cooking liquid but having tasted it I decided it already tasted a little lemony and needed no more. So, with or without the added lemon juice, reduce the sauce to your liking together with some judicious seasoning.
13. Scoop out the chorizo and cannellini bean stuffing and serve it with as much of your chicken as seems desirable together, of course, with a second bottle of wine.

The observant will have noticed a few Franco modifications already [the unadulterated recipe is linked above] but now we come to a Franco variation that I’m certain would not have been anticipated by the eminent Mr. Ramsay.

14. Carve all the remaining yummy bits off the chicken setting these aside for a subsequent human feast.
15. Given the chorizo and paprika flavours, making stock out of your carcass isn’t a terribly good idea so instead, pop it out into your garden, uncovered, at 0°C/gas 0 within sight of your trailcam.
16. Hit the sack to sleep off the wine.
17. In the morning, peer bleary-eyed outside to make sure the chicken has provided a feast for some wildlife.
18. Assuming all is well, retrieve your trailcam and review the captured footage.

I wasn’t sure how these adventurous flavourings might be received by our wildlife but, sure enough at 01:20 our [fox formerly known as] Limpy entered stage right and began sniffing around the grass. I’m a little intrigued by the behaviour: our diners don’t seem to make straight for the bait but appear to locate it by smell rather than by sight, eventually homing in on it. Curious.

Once located, Limpy set about chewing bits off the remains of Ramsay’s Roast Chicken and was certainly not put off by any taint of lemon and paprika. I had been expecting the guests to do a runner with the whole carcass and without paying but Limpy continued to dine in situ. So, in a cross-section of one, this recipe gets a big thumbs up from our fox community.

On this occasion Limpy didn’t leave a tip.