What you looking at.

Dunno ..could you ' shed ' some light on the subject ?

hes a beauty,fantastic photo Toto,

awww he`s lovely toto

This little chap was watching me work the other day. Perhaps I should have said she as a he would have helped.

lol toto, cheeky monkey :o)

Lovely photo, Toto, such a perky little bird.

Robin, Starling. Thrush/ whatever very cute little thingy"

Great photo Toto....

Thanks everone. Blackbird actually Pansy.

Very bossy looking ! Get that worm out of the ground and I mean now!!!! Where's my mum!? she is better at this than you Bud...!

Mum was around Cat but she was waiting for me to disturb insects and worms as well.

Well, get on with it then, man! Why are you taking so long?

Don't you think I did then Wagger. With a look like that I wasn't about to argue.

That was sensible, lol.

Dead right, I know which side my bread is buttered.

You get butter? Gosh you are spoiled - Mrs Toto must be a lovely lady.

Mrs. Toto (Jean) is a lovely lady Wagger. I wouldn't want to be without her. Whatever you do, don't tell her I said so.

I am sure she knows Toto...no way she could not. :) and that bird would have pecked your feet if you had not dug those worms ....lol...so intelligent of you to dig on for him/her...

Can't help it Cat. I just love to see them and try to help them get some food when I can. The birds seem to have deserted the garden lately but guess they'll be back when the easily obtained food in the wild becomes harder to find.

You can go to bank with that, Toto! He/she's precious.

So right GG. All life is precious and none more so than the many natural beauties. Man, I'm not so sure about.

Toto.....you exasperate me when you berate man...so here I am sending you this...we are all one with nature, we are not seperate, it is part of my Cherokee Indian belief system...we are all sacred and holy no matter. We must honor the good in each of us, it is within each of us, look at the first blooms of spring that is us as well.... ~Cat

Still

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

~ A. R. Ammons ~

Wonderful sentiments Cat but who among us can live up to that high order?
Animals, be they mammal, bird, reptile, amphibean, bug or anyone of the myriad of other creatures both great and small are always true to their own nature. That cannot be said for mankind who lies, cheats, steals, kills and maims all for his own perverse pleasures and to enhance his own wellbeing to the detriment of others. When a lion kills it is for food or the right to exist and the whole animal kingdom knows that this is the lions nature. Not so with man who will smile to your face and stab you in the back.
We as a race of human beings are a sad reflection of what I'm sure mother nature intended us to be.
Please make no mistake, I do include myself in the above.
I apologise if my views upset you Cat, or for that matter, anyone else but I truly believe that this planet would be better in man did not exist.

Nature created us Toto....and it will be nature that decides our fate...I am not upset...but concerned. Mankind is still in it's infancy in comparison to other forms of live and ya know what...I care ....what would the birds do without you tilling the garden for them...? ~Cat

I care too Cat. That is why I think as I do. Animals don't need me, as you so correctly pointed out, they were around long before we were and got on fine without us. It's only since we have destroyed their habitat and upset the balance of nature that they need help at all.

The Indians believe man is here as caretakers..and no we have not done such a great job in the last few hundred years...they call all nature family. brother, sister tree ..grandfather..etc...we need to get back there again...and we will, nature will get us back there...it will happen...I trust that.
You know Toto..I lived next door to a volcano that wreaked such havoc to animals, forest and mankind ..I have never seen such devastation..my son and his family just went on a camping trip there last week-end..seeing the pictures till breaks my heart. Not only did it devastate the landscape for hundreds of miles of square feet..it blew ash faster than the speed of sound 100's of miles to the east to where Weeds lives in Eastern Washington and Idaho..It blew it into the atmosphere that circled the globe for years and caused weather changes world wide..man could never compete with that..not in our whole lifetime could we do that without many atomic bombs...and it made me realise that we are only here at the whim of nature..and we can be taken out as fast as we were put here. Felt the same when the bluffs started to crumble in the wind and rain and I saw the waves take out land that we humans struggled to save...it is simply not our choice....something in us makes us greedy and stupid..why were we born with that in us...so we could learn maybe ...??? .I trust Mother Earth...she will teach us..we will learn...or we will die.

I really do understand and agree with everything you say with one exception and that rather than learn to live in harmony with nature we will continue to abuse and destroy it. The Indians you speak of, the aborigines of Australia, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Eskimos the smaller tribes of Africa all had the same philosophy and killed for food and not for pleasure or so called sport. Devastating as they are, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are a natural process of nature and not the results of selfishness and greed. I too trust mother nature and the sooner she gets her act together and rids the world of the scourge of mankind the better.

LOL...the only difference in us then is that I still hold out hope for mankind..as does Mother Nature apparently or we would all be dust in the atmosphere now...nice debating with you..shall we go back to gardening now...? :) =^..^= ~Cat

This is a nice little chap Toto. Are the birds breeding late due to the recent warm weather?
We have yet another set of baby moorhens on our pond this week. This must be the 4th lot - great stuff.

Yes Cat Gardening sounds good and I hope you and not me are right.
I think so Dawn. The only problem with them breeding late is that they may not put on enough weight in time for the colder months to come.

Oh no, I never thought of that, lets hope it stays mild and dry for a while then.

I do hope so Dawn. It makes me very sad to think of all the little ones who perish in their first year.

It makes me sad too Toto. Hope my tiny moorhens make it.

So do I.

I'm thinking about bringing some young mallards from work to live on my pond. They are full grown and very tame but I dont know if they would fly back but I suppose if they are well fed they would settle, what do you think?

I'm sure that they would be fine but you would need to cut off about a third ofd their flight feathers. It doesn't hurt the birds and, hopefully they will settle in to their new home.

Thanks for the advice Toto. You must feel that you've had your wings clipped, being trapped in your shed.

My shed is my refuge Dawn."When this old world starts getting me down" (Drifters circa 1960's) I don't go to the roof but to my shed.

I dont know that tune Toto as it was released before I was born, ha ha.

I'm sure it was Dawn. You look far too young to have been around then.

Thank you, you charmer :-)

I dont know how I missed this one Toto......Its a beautiful photo......I also remeber the song, but I remember having a copy of it sung by Kenny Lynch...........

Dawn Robson and Jerome also sang up on the roof as well as the Drifters which I too remember the song is called,up on the roof. Cat and Toto, man will not destroy the earth at all, the earth repairs it self also cleanses it self, Vocanos make the earth fertile, if seed s are blown is nt that good. Like forest fires and burning in Australia it makes the ground fertile and seeds survive. Man will destroy him self it will not be the earth. We are all to blame, how many people buy from the giant controllers who desimate the earth and poison our waters and contaminate the marine fish of which we eat, just to keep up with fashion, who buys the houses which are built on the green belts and flood plains, who buys the furniture and changes it every time fashion changes also cloths, when all these fashions repeat them selves, so buy traditional and it always stays. Also the wars , who are at the back of this but the greedy controlers which the people vote for, why do they go to war to make money to produce arms, cloths , furniture, medicines, flooring as most of these corporations are side branches of the controlers. Lovely little photo of the baby blacky so cute

LOL...Morgana..you have supported both our ideas....Toto who seems to not feel mankind is worth much at all...and me who realizes that Earth/Gaia...is very able to take care of herself, the difference between us all is that I still hold out hope for mankind as I do not believe we are seperate from the earth. ....and it is a very cute little birdy...lol.... :) ~Cat..

Yes Cat I supose I have :o)

Still dont know it Morgana, lol.

You would if you heard it, not unless your not a music fan my 21yr old sings along to Robson and Jerome version

I would know it I bet Morgana, I'll have to You Tube it, lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khhqyPzLmGo So if you take the job you ll have to climb his roof of his shed he he so make sure you have ladders in you stockings so you can climb lmao.

Robson who? They can only be mere imitations of the originals whoever he / they are. Cat and I are not so different but ithink that the sooner our race dies out the better. I hope I'm one of the first to go.

You're going nowhere Toto, lol

Probably Dawn but I did notice the reference to stockings. Do you remember the giggle zone?

Toto there is not a lot of difference between animals and humans, the only difference is they cannot bomb. If animals were not kept under control they too would distroy the earth, it s their poo, methaine gas that ruins the earth also volcano's, and for cheating and fighting animals are the same as humans in order to survive dosent the squirrel hide it nuts so the others dont find them in order to survive, I have lived on a farm and studied animals, just the other week I watched 3 magpies, 2 of which was pulling a chick apart on the roof of the church, the third magpie they attacked and tried to push off the roof, they both returned to pulling at the chick, then they both walked around to the frount of the church and when the 2nd one went back to the chick the 1st magpie tried to push the 2nd one off the roof. It is the larva flow in the centre of the earth why the poles are tilting which causes what we have today, it a natural thing, they cannot work out why it does this

Ha ha, yes Toto. Uniform and stockings, lol.

as to the tilting ..I believe it has to do with the moon and it is gradually over the eons moving further out and is gradually pulling the earth like a magnet..now how that works is beyond me as the moon is smaller..but I know it has something to do with what magnetics.

Its the lava flow Cat that causes the magnetic field to move, I watched a documentry on it all.

Very interesting... :)