Newcastle 365 Weeks 38 and 39: Bird Is the Word

Written by Jess Friedman
• June 15, 2015

The crows and magpies are locked in a territorial battle over the contents of the rubbish heap left by all the departing undergrads. While they’re busy waging aerial warfare on each other, the fattest rats I’ve ever seen are sneaking in the back way unnoticed and stealing all the good stuff.

This is where I live, folks. It is literally right under my window.

Gross.

But as much as I’ve enjoyed the influx of corvids around my place of residence, I much preferred the thousands and thousands and thousands of birds I saw on Wednesday.

THOUSANDS.

Maybe even millions. Who knows?

A group of us from the YSA group went up to the Farne Islands to get eaten by birds. True story. We took a boat tour out to an island that is populated mostly by ~~pirates~~ sea fowl, including puffins, eider ducks, guillemots, shags, kittiwakes, gulls, and terns. It’s nesting season for all the birds, and the terns are especially protective. We all had to wear hats or hoods to keep from getting pecked to death.

Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t kidding around, man.

Honestly, though, it was tons of fun. I took more pictures that day than on any other day in my entire life—and that includes shooting two weddings! There will definitely be a post about that trip, right after I finish posting about Greece.

In other words, sometime next year.

LOOK! Pictures!

Week 38

I was there to catch the train toward the airport. I had a long wait ahead of me…

We thought we were scoring brown rust on all of our plants. Turns out, we were actually scoring yellow rust…

I was back out at Nafferton for more disease assessing, this time on the Spelt plants. (Those are the short green plants next to my tall, purple rye plants.)

My friend Liz and I have been planning a trip to Arbeia Roman Fort for months, but it kept getting postponed for various reasons. We finally got to go, though, and it was really cool! Arbeia was a Roman fort built around AD 160 to guard the River Tyne. It was used as a military supply base for 17 forts along Hadrian’s Wall and had something like 24 granaries.

If I ever decided to go wild and crazy and film a horror movie that required the use of a large heart, I’d go to the butchers in Grainger Market.

To celebrate turning in our Literature Reviews, a few of us from the organic farming course got together to go bowling at the dive-iest of bowling alleys. Games were only £2/person—which explains why our pins and balls kept getting stuck and why the scoreboard kept making us play out of turn…

Week 39

All the undergrads moved out this week (including one of our flatmates, Bing Bing—noooooo!). That meant lots of rubbish was left piled up around the bins by our front door, and all the birds thought we left it out there for them to pick through. They even kept me awake during the night—or maybe that was the rats…

I spent the day catching up on adult life, but took a break to address some postcards and letters I’m hoping to get in the mail in the next couple of days. One lucky child is even going to get a hand-drawn illustration of a friendly Minotaur to color.

Yeah, I know this shot is similar to the other crow picture from this week. But I spent a lot of time looking out my window while I pretended to be an adult, and this is what I saw. It was either this or a picture of my lunch…

This is from the Laburnum Tree that grows in front of my flat. It’s covered in these lovely yellow flowers—or was, until they all started falling off and covering our sidewalk. They look like someone spilled cornflakes everwhere–but you wouldn’t want to eat them. All parts of the Laburnum tree are poisonous. Darn.

I stand by my belief that puffins are the cutest birds on the face of the planet. Easily one of the top 10 cutest creatures ever, avian or otherwise. Like this photo? It is now available as a print.

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Jess Friedman

Jess is a Canadian-American who’s always ready for the next adventure. She loves all things living, always has a million creative projects in progress, and polishes her nerd badge daily. She is passionate about helping families make and preserve treasured memories that strengthen bonds across generations. You can read more posts by Jess here.

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Tagged with Animals, Birds, Corvids, Nafferton, Newcastle, Newcastle 365, Puffins, Wildlife

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