Billhook

Also Thrushes line their nests with a layer of mud, whereas Blackbirds do not.

Song thrush eggs surely

Further search comes up with cowling controls JSTOR: Access Check WWW.JSTOR.ORG JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.

How do I prove it?!

Classic Airedales

There are all different kinds of people at any age! A friend and I cut up some dry firewood for an old man in his village. He wanted a certain length and thickness for his stove so it took a bit longer to produce. The old fella took out a garden hose and started sprinkling the wood with water, said it made it last longer...............

So old and creaky now that I need a red hot Radox bath each evening to relax my aching muscles! Been very cold here in Lincolnshire with North NE and NW winds, even the swallows came and then disappeared shortly afterwards. Very few insects about. My wife lights the Aarrow Stratford each morning, so easy with the branch loggings after I have brought them in the night before together with enough firewood for the day. We both really enjoy the whole process. Wood heat is so easy to enjoy as you have done all the work and now is your reward, unlike oil, electric and gas where you will receive a big bill eventually for the same amount of heat!

If it came from around the engine, it could have been a shaft to control the cold/hot air intake flap.

Yes you are probably correct but copying these recommendations off the web, I cannot see many UK customers bothering to do all this. In America it is a way of life and I am sure people show their log piles to each other with a sense of pride To help season wood as fast as possible and to keep firewood dry in the winter, the firewood should be: Stacked up with one side of the logs fully exposed to the atmosphere. Located under some sort of overhang to provide cover to the wood for the majority of rainfall and snow. Placed on a dry and impermeable platform such as concrete, or raised off the ground The UK is a damp place in Winter compared to US and Scandinavia where it may be cold and snow a lot but much less rain and fog. My only hope for all firewood producers is that it will become so expensive to heat .yourself in the Winter using electricity, since coal and gas and oil will be banned in the name of Climate Change, that firewood again will become valuable and there will be a lot of pressure on the Government to make it easily available especially after a few power cuts have nailed a lot of the elderly and vulnerable.

I think we called it Lady’s Smock when we lived in Norfolk

Cuckoo Flower and Lesser Celandine both signs of May

The problem was worse if we had to sell the grain early to make way for more storage. To do this we used heat in the early days before we had enough grain store capacity . When we eventually built enough capacity we were able to dry the grain slowly over the Winter to benefit from higher prices in March/April. The initial blowing of air after harvest in a wet year would take the grain down from say 24% to 18/19% quite quickly . (It was very difficult to harvest grain at high moisture content without losses at the combine) This would prevent the grain from heating up as the cooling effect of the air was just as important as the drying. Because it was so wet we could keep the fans going even if the relative humidity was high to keep the grain cool. As it dried to below 18% we had to be careful not to run the fans with humid air so the fans were controlled automatically to hopefully reach the 15% which meant the grain could be safely stored with less worry of heating or pests. Later on there were vertical auger stirring systems which improved air flow and broke the layer of damp grain. This would work well with sawdust and woodchip but obviously not with firewood! You can see how quickly things heat up if you put your hand in a heap of lawn cuttings after a week or two. Yes I suppose blowing dry air would dry firewood a bit quicker but the cost would be huge and I am not sure it would have much more effect on the inner wood.than just leaving it to dry in the conventional way. So air coming in at below 70% RH will dry corn down to 15% and oilseed down to *% Bulk Storage Drying of Grain and Oilseeds (HGCA Topic Sheet No.16) ADLIB.EVERYSITE.CO.UK This is where I have some difficulty with these new rules on firewood moisture content. I do not sell wood to the public and the only way I can make any sense of firewood production is to use it myself after producing it with my own labour which I thoroughly enjoy (for some bizarre reason!) to save on gas, oil and electric heating. If I spent all this money to dry wood down to the required percentage and sold it to someone who stored it outside in a badly ventilated shed, and who lived in a damp hollow, the wood would soon take the moisture out of the air and become damp and the customer might then come back and complain to some inspectorate to fine me

I have three corn stores with Challow wooden fully vented floors which are not being used at the moment as the grain from the farm is taken away by the contractor to dry in his barn. Having operated these on floor stores for many years I would be surprised if they worked for wood especially wood in crates. I have never done so. Then there is the massive cost of running the fans (electric) let alone the cost of heating (gas? wood?) which I would have thought would come to more than the value of the wood. We never used heat ,just ambient air and it could take several weeks in which case you may be better just storing it in a Dutch barn with open sides When we had a wet harvest, if the corn was too deep ,say over eight feet and you were not too vigilant there might be a layer of wet corn gradually making its way up and eventually forming a bridge to block air flow. With oilseed rape we never stored it above four feet. Very important to have a relative humidity switch on the fan to prevent blowing wet air through. Wood chips, perhaps or even densely stacked firewood even more perhaps. Having said all this I would be interested to hear the result.

I was thinking that I should have offered it for the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral to save having that special one made. As a Sandringham Six made by Hotspur Cars of Sandringham the name would be correct and the crane would have helped the pallbearers!

Forget the Easy Start, just give the man on the handle a squirt of this!

Like this you mean, tipper as well as 3.5 V8 Stage 1

Goslings doing well on lake so far, they have a lot to deal with in the coming weeks, crows, magpies, stoats, mink, cats, foxes, hawks, buzzards maybe even pike.

Nah, it’s not dead it’s resting! There I saw it move

Yes the lack of insects has a large knock on effect for all to wildlife Bats need them desperately as do most garden birds trying to feed their young My wife and I went down to the lake for a cuppa in the sunshine and it was very apparent that insects were back big time!

I felt like royalty today witnessing a flypast After all the crap rain and cold yesterday, it is quite warm and sunny this morning although breezy I went out the back door and five swallows swooped and dived inches from my face, twirled around each other and went in out of the car port inspecting last years nests. Then sat on the old television aerial while we had a chat about our different Winters! They told me that they never had any lockdowns! I have never before witnessed wild birds so pleased to be back!

You were 68 in January, stop trying to hide your real age!

I suppose that if they say that 50% of the time they have a good chance of being right!

I realise that there is nothing new about memory loss with age, I was just wondering if it has been accelerated in the last year. The young usually are quick to correct me or come up with a name but this has not been the case recently. I remember reading somewhere that your memory actually improves as you age but it affects you more when you are older. For instance if you forgot your pen at school you would probably think little of it but if you are the MD of a big company and you arrive at an important meeting having forgotten your pen, you think that you are losing your mind as well.?

I think I have repeated myself on this thread already! Somebody stop me!

Yes now I think about it, it was always names of people that went straight in one ear and out of the other. Being introduced to a group of people at a party or a business meeting. I think in those cases you are so busy assessing the person you are looking at and making quick judgements that the brain side lines the less important name. But the Hornbeam incident really made me think as it is a solitary tree on the farm road here and at this time of year looks just like a beech and I try to catch people out with it, but just managed this time to catch myself out! Some telephone numbers and all my bank statements and bank codes I remember well Yesterday a girl in the bank asked for my banking pass code number and I just reeled it off straight away " Oh dear, she said I only wanted the last two digits and now I am going to have to send you another number .in the post" I am really on about something a little different. I just notice it more with other people at the moment, people who I am sure would have remembered the name a year ago, a bit like " What is the name of that site on the web that talks about trees!" "It's on the tip of my tongue, I'll think of it in a minute!"