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Well it certainly felt like it this weekend. Spent the entire of Saturday doing a bit of spring cleaning and I have to admit that house looks better for it. Jay and Sharon came over in the evening (yes I know, I always need an incentive to clean the place up!) and Andy actually put the door back on the bathroom in their honour! A little ray of hope is that Jason thinks we should be able to move the radiator without pulling up the tiled floor, which means we also won't have to pulled down the bedroom wall to sort out the shelf. Happy days. The flowers that Sinead and Mary bought me for my birthday were in full bloom too, which brightened up the house...

First thing on Sunday we took Andy's folks over to his Uncle's house in Ballyclare and took the scenic route home. As we drove down a county lane the biggest rabbit I've ever seen hopped across the road in front of us! It really was the size of a Flemish Giant, which is way bigger than your average wild rabbit. Further down the road we came across a normal sized young rabbit - so cute. I do missed my bunnies.
On my Sunday walk this week I came across lots of signs of nesting birds. The Swifts have built nests in the eaves of several houses and were busy too-ing and fro-ing from the nest, which suggests that they already have chicks hatched. The only Rock Pippet I saw had a beakful of grass, obviously nest building.
I was delighted to get a close up shot of the ever-elusive Curlew. He landed fairly close by and I was partially hidden by tall grass so I could film away to my heart's content unnoticed...

I haven't seen many Cormorants of late, but there was a Shag in the water seemingly having a bath, but he carried on this flapping behaviour for so long that I'm wondering if it was some sort of mating ritual,

although the only other Shag around was about 20 yards away - eventually the one in the sea flew over to the one sitting on the rock but even then they chose to sit a way apart from each other...

The other highlight was the beautiful song of the Wren. Last week one landed less than 6 foot from me and sat there singing away for several minutes, but because I was so close I couldn't get the camera out. This week I spotted one far enough away to be able to film it but close enough to get a photograph...

When I got back from the walk I decided that I'd earnt the right to a few hours sitting in the garden. As I sat there a fledgling landed on the greenhouse and stayed there for about 20 minutes whilst the parents flew back and forth with food. I had to go back into the house in the end as Sadie was having a far-from-desirable effect on the birds. When I came back out they had flown off. I hope the little one made it safely into the world of flight - they are so vulnerable at that stage and there are rather a lot of cats around the neighbourhood.

Well that's my diary up to date. With the Bank Holiday weekend coming up I will be partaking in the Belfast Marathon Walk. It's 9 miles and I'm doing it ito raise money for the NSPCC so if anyone would like to encourage me with a bit of sponsorship it will be much appreciated. Drop me and email or add on to this message.

Kxx