End of Winter

Oh my, it's been so long since my last post again. Here are a couple of photos from Autumn and Winter.

In early Autumn I visited a nature reserve Vodomčev gaj on their Day of open door. We saw a lot of animals up close and even held some like Common toad or navadna krastača (I tried kissing it, but it didn't turn into a prince)...

... and saw a demonstration how they catch the birds like Little bittern or čapljica...

...how they weigh them (yes, they put the smaller birds heads down in a shot glass)

... and then they tag them. On that day there were plenty of different Warblers or penice in the nets.

I was surprised how patiently they were tolerating the handling, there was no fear or panic visible.

After the Summer sailing season Heron was in marina in Pula, it is juts 2 hours drive from our home. So we used the nice days to do some boat projets like replacing the exhaust hose. Here are both the new and the old one.

The old one was really tired, on the part near the engine it was even cracked through and sea water was dripping from it. So the replacement was urgent.

This is where it connects to the engine.

And this is in back locker - needless to say there is extremely little space through where the hose has to be laid and there are several quite sharp turns as well.

Here behind the Captain the hose is connected to through hull. 

Here's how the hose is made - it needs to withstand high temperatures from exhaust gases and salt from sea water that is mixed with gases to cool them down. 

One of my favourite pastime in Autumn is walking in woods and picking mushrooms. This past season was very good, we saw a lot of different mushrooms, not just edible ones. This is one of more exotic ones - the Devil's fingers or lovkasta mrežnica.

The Cep or Porcino or goban is considered the best of all eating mushrooms, and it's not just delicious but also pretty. This one was actually growing as on the photo - horizontally.

And this one was quite big, its cap was the size of my hand.

And some more pretty, but dangerous ones - the Fly amanitas or rdeče mušnice.

In winter we were visiting my mom a lot, and on nice days we made walks at the nearby lake or Mura river.

At our house we are regularly feeding the birds in winter, our bird feeder is quite near the house, so I can easily watch the birds through the window and even take photos of them. Here are some regular visitors - the Eurasian collared dove (turška grlica or Streptopelia decaocto) in company of House sparrows (domači vrabci or Passer domesticus).

These are my favourites - the Longtailed tits (dolgorepke or Aegithalos caudatus). They are not just so beautiful with their long tails and round bodies...

...but also have the most adorable little faces.

They are coming to the feeder for some years now and they are always in small loud groups, chatting to each other. Among other guests are all kinds of Tits (siničke), Woodpecker (detel), Finches (ščinkavci) and the pretty Goldfinches (liščki or Carduelis carduelis) with their red faces.

The winter is slowly ending, we had some nice warm spring days already now in March.  As we will spend more time outdoor and on Heron, there will be more interesting things to post in the future.