ROBIN, ROBIN, SUCH A TEASE!

THE CAMERA NEVER LIES. HASHTAGS, RATHER MORE OFTEN!

I take lots of photos these days with my faithful ultrazoom bridge camera.

Even on days when I'm too ill to venture far, there's always something swanking into shot, flaunting its best profile, posing for its spotlight moment, framed by my lens.

Birds. Such remarkable characters, always up to some busy business!

The Moon. I try to capture her in all her moody magnificence.

Clouds. A member of the Cloud Appreciation Society and a BBC Weatherwatcher, I aim to keep one eye on the sky.

Trees. Flowers. Fungi. Every one inspirational and unique.

Planes. Pipers with their sleek lines and their ankle socks aka in less anthropomorphic style, their wheel fairings or spats. Cessnas with those jaunty struts bracing up their wings. Taildraggers. Show-offs phuttering over my rooftop.

Anything that makes my imagination do a creative somersault.

I upload my snapshots to Flickr (other photo clouds are available!)
Flickr has its own puzzling range of bewildering tags. Even when you've tagged your own images with the appropriate search terms. Sometimes I find my crescent moon's been labelled "FULL MOON" or even worse "PIZZA" or just "FOOD".

Flickr once labelled my image of a Pheasant as "DOG" and a Wood Pigeon recently metamorphosed via Flickr tag into an "EAGLE". Though I never was quite sure what kind of crossbreeding they imagined was going on, or what they'd been drinking!

Then there are clouds that Flickr insists are "MOUNTAINS" "SEA" or "SNOW". Local upland fields here in northern England it calls "PLAINS" as if they've been transplanted into the New World. Often the Flickr bots throw up their hands and attach perplexing tags like "ABSTRACT" "MINIMALIST" and (even when it isn't) "MONOCHROME".

I often marvel at how Flickr manages to transform birdwatchers like me into unwitting soft porn peddlers! No sooner have I tagged a Great Tit, Blue Tit, Coal Tit or Long-tailed Tit than my view count soars up into the hundreds overnight! Last week when I tagged the catkins of Salix caprea, Goat or Pussy Willow, my view count skyrocketed and kept on climbing off the scale.

Just imagine the droves of disappointed users clicking and salivating in anticipation of extracurricular thrills, only to be frustrated by my innocent picture of a tree in springtime!

If you've ever had hilariously inappropriate tags added to your photos, please share your laughs by leaving a comment below.

If you fancy exploring my Flickr, ditch your dirty raincoat, grab a cuppa and join me over at:
Joyce's Flickr

2017 - COMING READY OR NOT!

Sunset, South Yorkshire (all words and images author's own)

We don't have to search very hard for reminders of why 2016 has more than its fair share of reasons to be lamented loudly and then forgotten. Nightmare politics and propaganda, media meltdowns, financial uncertainty, deaths of a golden host of celebrity friends we thought we knew like family, unfathomable tragedies, war and hatred we children of the sixties once dreamed the world would be too wise and too compassionate for by now.

Sometimes just checking in on social media, letting our eyes scan a newspaper or fix on current affairs on the screen, can trigger a tailspin into hopelessness, cynicism, bitterness, shrugged shoulders, hardened hearts.

Coral and apricot skies

Today I decided. Time to focus on things I might have missed if I hadn't lived through this rollercoaster year. Time to allow myself to be thankful. Thankfulness washes world-weary shredded nerves like a gentle spa of healing for the heart.

Thankfulness doesn't mean you're suddenly Pollyanna. Gratitude doesn't cocoon you from empathy with those suffering or excuse you from giving a damn. But it can help you find your footing on the slimiest slope. It can remind you of the motive that coaxes you to get up for another day.

Spot the pigeon

Here are my treasures gleaned and gathered from 2016:

-taking the plunge of going gluten-free, dairy-free, nightshade-free to try and give my body with its tortured neuroimmune system a chance to heal itself. Gradually glimpsing a life beyond the constant fog of exhaustion, pain and sickness. Doesn't mean I'm miraculously cured of a lifelong knot of autoimmune illnesses, but it seems to have allowed me the blessing, at long last, of better days. I've even had to reduce my blood pressure pills down to the very minimum and my insulin cartridge lasts me a week! A couple of dried dates can bring me back from a low blood sugars now instead of 30 years of severe hypos rescued by jelly babies and lucozade! Result!

-discovering water Kefir grains, brewing homemade probiotic ginger beer and soda and enjoying what a positive effect it seems to have on my digestion. Plus I'm so attached I think of my little jellified chums as pets now, giving back so much more than they get from a shot of sugar and mineral water! Still going strong after six months, they're currently having a little rest and recuperation in my fridge over the holidays! They so deserve it! 

Water kefir in spring water

-being well enough for my first longed-for holiday, five days in June in fabulous Flamborough to restore my soul and get inspired for my novel which is set along that stunning coast. 

North Landing, Flamborough, East Yorkshire 

-reconnecting with my bestie from schooldays after she resettled in the UK after decades living abroad. Our weekly Skype adventures, texting, laughter and far-ranging heart-to-hearts till the early hours are a joy to my spirit. The years fall away and we're in our teens again, but even closer with the richer perspective of the years apart.

My bestie and I conquering the Skype gremlins 

-teaching myself how to bake the most moist, rich, delicious chocolate cake I've ever tasted, using coconut oil, almond flour and ingredients that no longer make my blood sugars spike, with the joy of never needing to deprive myself of my ultimate salted caramel treat! That is, if I've ever got any left after sharing it with eager friends and family!

Gluten-free salted caramel chocolate cake

-dog-sitting a variety of furry friends of friends who fill up, temporarily, that dog-shaped hole in my heart since my own lad passed away.

Cocker Spaniel sisters discovering treat puzzle ball

-inching towards the publication of my second novel, “Cloudhover Solstice” with all the attendant pleasures of plotting, researching, dreaming, writing and editing, plus the privilege of knowing how much my characters have found their fond place in the imaginations of my readers. So thankful to the kind few who support me by leaving a review, sharing posts, tweets and spreading the word. You are worth more than gold to me, even if I never earn a penny from my passion!

Work-in-progress novel. Not the *actual* cover!

-adventuring on a fungus foray by day and a bat walk by night in local woodland and having the quiet thrill of being at one with the wonderful natural world that surrounds us in this lovely corner of Yorkshire.

Orange Birch Bolete on the Fungus Foray in October

-soap! After night after night of sciatic twinges and cramps, googling in sheer desperation for help with agonising, sleep-shrinking restless legs, I came across what sounds like some mad old wives' tale of putting soap in a sock in your bed. I bought a cheap tablet of soap from the Co-op the next day, stuck it in an old knee-high, shoved it sceptically between the sheets. I haven't had full-blown cramp since that first night! No more idea why this works than anybody else – maybe I'm a mad old girl, too, but who's counting? 

Soap in a sock

-acquainting myself with my new all-singing, all-beeping insulin pump, Humph Mk II and his handset, the rather feisty Rita the Second. Yes, I still scream at Rita when I'm hypo and she's nagging me to eat. I still roll my eyes at Humph when he decides he needs new batteries in the middle of something more interesting. But you've got to love technology and ingenuity. They're keeping me alive from one moment to the next. My great gran was dead at 42 for lack of such inventions being widely available in the 1920s.

Me and my portable pancreas

-the birds, the Moon, passing planes, the trees, the flora and fauna, the clouds, the sunsets, the faces, the patterns, the colours that have kept my camera clicking throughout this year and the privilege of reliving eternally these moments frozen in time and sharing them with friends the world over.

Full Grain Moon over the wood

-friends, old and new, online and with flesh on, who remind me how many truly wonderful and special people are on this planet, fighting to ensure that love will always win over prejudice, bigotry and hate.

2017, you're welcome! You might not be gentle. You might not be all we hope for. But I'm coming to make the best of you, ready or not!

NIGHT LIGHTS

Stargazers, Moon watchers, insomniacs and anyone living city or suburban life these days will relate to my tongue-in-cheek poet photographer's rant on modern light pollution! Hope this brings you a smile!

Feather Canyons Everywhere

Joni* sang them bittersweet
Pinned her passions to those sunny stacks
Sixties summer clouds in fleet
Cathedrals of confessions

Vapour can't be cabined quaint
Clouds reinvent themselves by stealth
Beyond our metaphor power to paint
Squish or squeeze into boxy verses

They rephrase us and resketch
We gaze into their radiant rhythms
We squint and shade, crick-necked
While they risk to juggle rainbows

Between their fingers hold air blue,
Sunsets of apricot, bent birds homing,
Letting the wind think itself Picasso
Serendipity into symbol smudging.



If you love clouds as I do, you can join with others who feel the same here> The Cloud Appreciation Society

*Joni Mitchell, Canadian singer, songwriter, painter and musician who wrote the song "Both Sides Now" (1970, which won her a Grammy) from which my poem's title is taken. You can listen to it here>  Joni Mitchell sings "Both Sides Now" (1970)

Long-tailed Tits through a lens

Not often the Long-Tailed Tits hang around long enough in my garden for me to snap them with my digital camera through my hastily aimed and focused spotting scope.

Earlier today, a little flock of them breezed through, adults and juveniles. Giggling round the suet feeders. Swarming up and down the herbaceous borders, twittering pinkish brown and white dynamos attached to a cleft black tail like a ruler with white calibrations on the edges! Then they were gone again, this little family of half a dozen.

I'd never make it with the paparazzi, but I hope you'll enjoy my amateur shots of these tiny stars!

Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus) at my suet feeder near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK

Long-tailed Tit (right) sharing the suet slab with a Robin

Acrobatic Long-tailed Tit with suet pellet gripped in its claw as it nibbled the treat

Know your onions!

You're game birds - not garden birds!

He's back! For a second year running!

Only this time, Mr Pheasant's got company on my back lawn...

Who's that girl?

Don't be shy! It's Mrs Pheasant!

They spent a few hours feeding on what other legit garden birds had dropped from the feeders

Explored every corner of the property at their leisure...

Is this my best profile?

Or this? Did you get my crest thingummy and earflaps?

Enjoying their cheap away day from the fields...

Have I missed a bit of that seed?

Time to whirr off back home. Till next time.

Photos star a brace of Yorkshire-dwelling Pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) in the middle of May, in a suburban back garden close to rural woods, fields and farmland.


Photos taken on an old Nikon Coolpix 3700 3.2 Mega pixels 3x optical zoom camera, hand held through a Barr & Stroud Sahara 15-45x spotting scope by the author. Yes, I know there's a lot of focus issues and "vignetting" in these shots. Still really hope you enjoy meeting these characters that brightened up my afternoon!