Far From the Madding Crowd: June 2010

Monday, 14 June 2010

Father and Son (or Daughter)

While I was busy doing my last post 'The Chilly North' there was quite a bit of noise in my garden, two Great Spotted Woodpeckers on the nutfeeder, a male and its young. The noise was coming from the juvenile, wanting his (or her) Dad to give it some peanuts. Lovely to watch. The GS Woodpecker adult and young have been visiting my garden now for about three weeks and I have noticed that it is the male GS Woodpecker that does the feeding, this I also saw last year. I very quickly got my camera and took these pictures through the lounge window.

Great Spotted Woodpecker, father and son or daughter (2)

Great Spotted Woodpecker, father and son or daughter (3)

My Blog

I have taken the title of my blog from Thomas Hardy's fourth novel 'Far From the Madding Crowd' which he wrote in 1874. He took his title from Thomas Gray's poem 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' completed in 1750. Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset where he lived for most of his life and where he based the stories in his novels. The word 'madding' means frenzied and there is a sense of freedom I get being out in the countryside and being close to nature away from the frenzied atmosphere of the towns and cities. I live in Dorset and like Thomas Hardy, it is where I have lived for most of my life, my blog is mostly about nature in Dorset. I am a member of the Dorset Wildlife Trust. I will include my garden and anything of interest about the natural world in Britain.