Weekending

Weekending, my favorite part of the week. A time to relax, live, love, just to be.
Joining with Amanda.

This has been a lazy weekend.
We've spent most of it out soaking up sun in what
we norwegian call the "solveggen" - (the sun wall).
This is a spot with no wind were you can actually sit without
too many clothes on in spite of the low temperatures.
Lots of frecles and even a little sunburn.
Endre beeing high on sugar after a birthday party...
Chocolate cake and home made pizza.
Getting a good laugh watching Hangover 2 with hubby.
Cute little Snow Buntings in the garden - more photos here.
Loads and loads of laundry smelling of fresh air :)

Wordless Wednesday :: Feeding the birds

Wordless Wednesday

Weekending

How was your weekend?

Mine has been filled with...

Lots and lots of hours spent outdoors
Hiking
Playing
Great to see that our mallard couple are back
Blowing soap bubbles
No need for an alarm clock - a woodpecker have been banging on the lids of the telephone poles to find food
Julie & Julia - a geat movie
Warm - we've had around 15C
Crocheting
Lunch made over a fire in the forest
Watching the ice melt on the lake
Birds chirping

Feeding the birds

During winter we feed the birds with sunflower seeds, nuts and balls of tallow mixed with seeds and nuts.
Usually we just have willow tits and great tits to look at.

And some flocks of Greenfinchs now and then.

But the last couple of weeks we've had this guy (or girl) lurking around gathering seeds that the other birds keep dropping to the ground. I had to look him up in a birdbook and he's a Eurasian Jay. He's very shy and in the beginning he flew away by the smalles sound or if a car drove by. Now he's more brave and can stay for a while. Endre and I tossed out some bread for him today, and after a while he took it and flew away.

Great tits (just love the name *lol*) and some tallow balls.

 

More birds :) I'm knitting a pair of mittens for Eirin. I'm knitting them on 2 mm needles, but they got a bit narrow, so I think'll frog it and knit on 2,25 mm or 2,5 mm needles instead.

At the playground, dragonfly and builing a bridge

We've spent the morning in the playground in the park :) Playing, eating pizza and watching a grey heron and ducks.

Later in the day the kids managed to catch a dragonfly. Look at Endre's face - it's the first time he sees one :)

Earlier this week the boys have been busy building a bridge over a little creek we have to cross (jump over) when we go hiking up to our lean-to. And today they desided to make a sign. Translated it means "Creek Bridge".

The harsh reality of life

Remember the nest we found at Midsummer? Yesterday we went to
see if the eggs had hatched. But this was the sight that met us...
I think it's a magpie who has been here and eaten the eggs. There is not
a day without birds chasing magpies away from their nests around here.

The kids got very dissapointed ofcourse, but this was also
a great way to learn about the harsh reality of life. The eggs
got a close examine before they carefylly got placed back in the nest.

We have in several weeks followed a great tit pair in building a nest, sitting on eggs and feeding the kids. Since they have the nest under the roof we can only hear the kids ;) We think it's time for the kids to leave the nest soon, so we hope we are so lucky that we are outside when it happens.

A day at the beach

We had rented this cabin for the weekend and went up to it Friday afternoon. After playing outside for hours until bedtime, everything was just fine. But with a cabin that everyone can rent, I guess there will always be someone that don't bother to clean up after oneself... And I think it must be years since last time this cabin has been washed down from roof to floor... So when we went inside and the kids started to play in the beds and sofa, the air got filled with dust... The result, Endre got thight in his chest, and could have gotten an asthma attack if we had stayed :( So we just had to pack up and drive home.

But the weekend turned out great still :) Saturday we went to Aglapsvik where there is a great beach. 

The tide was low so one part of the beach was filled with
big rocks covered with little blue mussels.

Cockle or "Heart shell" as we call them in Norway.

Blunt gaper.

Sandworm cast.

Amphipods ( scud).

The "egg bag" from a common whelk.

There was several common eider mams with kids swimming, but
no dads. A bit sad because they have some great colors.

Mountain avens.

The baby birds are growing

We had to see how the baby birds were doing today.
The nest is on the ground at the tree the kids are going too.
Click on the picture to look better.

And they were doing fine. They've started to get feathers and have grown
a lot these few days.

We don't know what kind of bird this is, but we think it's a fieldfare. Here's mammy or daddy
bird watching us, and they were not very happy over us being here
looking at the nest...

Finally great weather

After days (weeks) with rain, the weather got better today, And despite some cold wind we packed our backpacks and headed out in the forest today.

The girls are having a break on our "big rock" on the way up.

The forest has finally turned green and the cabin blends in with the forest.

The bog if covered with cloudberry flowers.
So we just hope it will be just as much cloudberries.

Cloudberry flower

Some other plants we found.

  Viola biflora
Globe-flower
Fern
Bunchberry
Trailing Azalea
  Bog-rosemary

Parts of the bog is covered with dwarf birch.



We found several kinds of mosses and lichens. this is cup lichen.

When it comes to knowing the names of mosses and lichen,
I'm not good. But I know that the one at the bottom to the
right is reindeer lichen.

And there is still some spots with snow left on places with very little sun.

"Kjuke"
It's a hard grey fungus which grows on birch and finally kill them. In the old days they used the soft material in the middel to catch the sparks when using flint and steel to make fire. They also used it to stop bleeding.

And they can be wings of a butterfly ;)

The house of the forest faries..?

On our way home the kids found this little nest with tiny little bird babies
just beside the path. So we have to go up and chech if they grow up.

Mallards

This morning we had these two outside our window when we had breakfast.
A mallard couple.

See how good she blend in with the gras!

Here is the ice a couple of days ago. Now it's all gone and we're
waiting for the swans to come too.

And when one is outside one can hear it cluck and run in lots of
streams. It's a lot of grouse in the forest this year, and we can hear them coo.