The Naked Birdwatcher

Friends and followers of my Instagram account may have seen footage from our cctv enabled nestbox the last two seasons showing a family of bluetits nesting and eventually fledging said box.

  

Further to this they have also been treated to my 3d printing shenanigans including the birdfeeders you can see here.

  

 For those who may be interested you can get design files for all manner of stuff 3d print wise from thingiverse and hack/remake or design your own using tinkercad. This may sound terribly expensive and complicated but when you consider a 3d printer in kit form can be had new for under £100 and print model files themselves are for the most part open source and free..well it could almost be considered rude not to have a little dabble. My entire set up including the desk, chair, the 3d printer itself, the consumables (filament cleaner fluids wipes etc) and a couple of upgrades so it's less likely to burn my house down has so far amounted to less than £200..and that includes buying a half decent second hand desktop computer to dedicate to running it.

Now, my apologies for the somewhat clickbaity title however in my defence it is a technically true statement and if I hadn't thought of it just now this rather neglected blog probably wouldn't contain this entry. You see these feeders have seen very little action in the few months since I printed them. Aside from the odd pigeon attempting a landing and usually failing or myself banging my head on them more often than occasionally when I walk down the garden both resulting in birdseed spillage all over the patio I havent needed to refill them.   For some reason though, perhaps it's the weather or the time of year when we have lots of youngsters fledging the nests or maybe the bloke next door isn't filling his plethora of feeding stations up as much, the last week or so we have begun to notice birds taking more of an interest. This morning when I got up and was making my way downstairs to the shower (hence the naked part) I noticed loads of activity around the feeders. Not wanting to miss the opportunity I quickly grabbed my camera from the cupboard and started snapping the shots you see here through the backroom window.

	TITS!! lots of them.. ..and other birds Click thumbnails to enlarge...

Fortunately I was close enough not to get any unwanted reflections..or maybe that should be read unfortunately if you arrived here purely because of the title. 

Take a seat.

Forgive me reader if this post presents itself as rather euphoric but I believe humanity has finally truly evolved to its next level.
'How so?' I suspect you are thinking, current events, earthquakes and other natural disasters, not to mention nuclear threats in Asia and terror in the Middle East surely point towards Armageddon especially if you have happened to stray over onto the more errr eccentric side of Youtube recently.

Well going about my usual business in Aldi this morning I found on sale a toilet seat..it gets better reader.. down from £15.99 to an almost affordable £8.50 in the up to 50% reduced special buys bins. Woohoo thought I knowing that for several months the upstairs khazi has been adorned with a lime green plastic affair prone to slippage and recently missing its outer lid.

   
Normally I check carefully prospective  purchases before adding them to the shopping trolley, however I spotted the words soft close and after picking up the box and finding it reassuringly heavy nestled it straight in amongst the baby maris pipers, own brand cola and everyday essentials real butter...salted if you were wondering.

Now on its own this might have put me in a good mood, after all there is something mildly satisfying about a quality bathroom fitting. Having one's posterior met  by upmarket warm thermoset plastic on a cold morning has a lot to be said for it especially if like me you can remember the days of the outside bog and its freezing hard black seat. Coupled with a luxurious soft close hydraulically dampened hinge you can see how my general disposition may have been elevated..

This particular throne topper though with its smooth action and top quality material is a thing designed for palaces and landed gentry. In fact I would suspect even the ablution facilities adjoining Valhalla may lack this feature.. On reading the fitting instructions I found It's quick release. The whole thing comes off at the push of a button for...errr... hang on.. oh yes cleaning
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The owners manual however doesn't mention the other obvious benefits of such a mechanism. Quick release means portable. everyone in the house could have one, even public conveniences could be fitted with the attachment points so you would never again need to perform a dreaded hover dump over municipal porcelain. Worrying about looters stealing it after a hurricane? Never fear simply click and take it to the nearest shelter with you.

It could spawn a whole industry of accessories, monogrammed carry bags, custom release buttons,  branded wet wipes and maintenance kits.  I have seen the future reader and it's in the middle Isle of Dudley Aldi. I kid you not.  

Photo*!#cket

Pictures. I like them. I take lots of them. I also uploaded loads of them to photobucket.com so they'd magically appear on here.. Except now they seem to want $400 a year before they will do any wand waving. Words like Ransomware and extortion spring to mind...

Hmmm...fortunately being reasonably proficient in casting the odd web spell myself I've figured out that sites.google.com will kindly throw pixie dust on my photoblog pictures so they appear where I want them... however re-writing my incantations to remove the three separate references to photobucket.com for every picture that appears in my photo gallery entries still took up most of last weekend.

 Expelliarmus eh reader?