Snow Tonight?

This morning brought very heavy rain which started as soon as I began picking more leaves. The predicted sleet didn't arrive but it is incredibly windy. The new plastic roofing sheets on Linas' bike shed were heaving and lifting ominously so I've put some lengths of wood up there to add a bit of weight. They needed tidying away anyway. The sky looks rather grey and Metcheck says we will have sleet and snow overnight so I'm going to drive my car up while it is still light. Then I won't have to worry. More birds (and a pile of poo). This time a couple of pheasants that were walking around in Ron's field. Pheasants are not native birds but are captive bred, then released into the wild in spring to be shot in the autumn. People pay hundreds of pounds to come and shoot at them as they are driven into the air by beaters. Pretty pointless really. The main road into this area, the North Devon Link Road, runs along the back of the Filleigh Estates (owned by the Earl of Arran ) which run a big pheasant shoot. The sides of the road are always littered with the corpses of pheasants that have been hit by the traffic on this very busy main road. Pheasants are not very clever birds and do get hit on the country roads as well. The law does not allow you to pick up a bird, (or animal) that you have hit but you can pick up birds that some one else has hit.

This is the standard colour of the male birds but you also get nearly black birds and very pale birds. They generally run along the road before flying off with a great whirr and clatter.

Heard owls last night. I had thought that the whoo whooing that we hear a lot was Barn owls but apparently that's the tawny owls. Barn owls screech more and that's what we heard last night. Ron has a proper barn owl nest box in a ruined barn just 2 fields away and we often see the barn owls perched on the fence in the evening.