Birds and wildlife..

It's been a week for wild life again. Our greater spotted woodpecker is still visiting to eat the grubs out of the lawn, and the black redstart was sitting on the ground only about  feet from the window. But we have had two far more interesting sightings this week....

This is a griffon vulture..

Picture courtesy http://www.rondatoday.com/griffon-vulture-of-the-serrania/

 And this is a little owl...

Picture courtesy http://www.markhancoxbirdphotography.co.uk/pages/galleries/owls.php?gall_id=29

One is quite large and one is quite tiny, and we have seen them both this week. The vulture was flying in a crowd of about 14 or 15 vultures, we assume heading to Spain as they appeared to be travelling North to South, and appeared to be loving the hot weather thermals. And yes, they were definitely griffon vultures. Hubby's binoculars came in very handy to identify them. The owl was just sitting on the roof of the semi derelict building next door and then hopped onto our fence before flying off.

Now I have never seen either of these birds in the wild before, only in bird sanctuary type places so was really excited on both occasions. It just goes to show how easy it would be to miss exciting things like this if you don't look up and out from being wrapped up in our day to day existence.

Moving to France has given us the opportunity to take a step back from working to live or living to work, and a chance to start to appreciate the things around us far more than we have ever done before. Today we stood and watched a frog enjoying the heavy down pour of rain, and laughing when it jumped into the drain that runs along the front of our house and got washed away in the torrent - it was quite safe and unharmed I hasten to add, just a little surprised at the force of the water.

Today's thought for the day

 Stop wasting time waiting to arrive somewhere and take the time to enjoy the journey along the way. If you don't you will miss a million things that you may never get chance to see again..