Under the stars

NEW FEATURE.
COOKING TIPS..with Max The Puppy

Perfect Sirloin Steak

1. Protect the cook from bears and wolves until dinner time.


2. Stand back and let her do her stuff...Oh yeah!

Next week... Polar Bears and Spare Ribs.



CAMP FIRE TALES; THE DUSK CHORUS.
The noise out there, as the sun goes down, can be extraordinary. Tawny owls kick it off. there are all sorts of unidentified shrieks and howls and then the foxes make a kill. Later the same foxes will join in the cacophony with a fantastic vocal repertoire of unearthly sound. It's quite something to lie back and listen to.
This particular night (Friday) Sue came hurriedly back to the camp, convinced that she had heard a pig squeal and although I laughed, I heard it a few minutes later and it sure did sound like a pig to me.
She woke me in the small hours to listen to the howling banshees and later confessed that she was quite worried until she realised that Max was sleeping by the door.
Max is no angel.Ha! Ha! Well, he's in charge of security. He's a dog, sometimes it's good to know he's around.
He reacts very differently to something he regards as prey and to something he regards as a threat. Prey gets chased, silently, no warning. A threat gets met with growling and barking. Anyway twice in the night he warned of a threat and once he got away from me and took off into the darkness. It could only have been a man or another dog, I've never seen him react that way to anything else. Whatever it was, it got away from him, so it wasn't a man and I didn't hear any yelping so it wasn't a dog.

MORNING.
I set out alone, hoping to find the cause of all the disturbances. There was nothing out there, a few little ginger dogs, no banshees.



It struck me again, how beautiful everything was.



And then we had a nice cup of tea.



This is Wild Arum or Cuckoos Pint (not what Sue's drinking, the next pic). Very common and quite poisonous, a drop of the juice would burn your mouth for hours and it can kill a child. Just as well to know these things.



Wild arum- Arum maculatum
More



These are more of my Razorstrops. Birch polypore- Piptoporus betulinus. Pure as snow.

Trouble at the hide:

A masked bandit has been making free with our nuts. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to hide them in the trees.


Nuthatch- Sitta europaea
More



And this is Bess. She is sixteen years old, she has an inner ear problem that causes her to stagger around, quite lopsided. And she has lost her marbles. None of this misfortune bothers her and she trots around the woodland paths, tail wagging away, oblivious to the search parties. Happy as Larry.


Tilly, chillin' (masterminding her takeover of the human race)