Falafels & butternut squash stew

Cauldron Moroccan spiced falafel bites 180g x2
Potatoes - 4
Onion - 1
Butternut squash - half a large one
Kale - some
Chopped tomatoes - 1 tin
Garlic - 2 cloves
Lemon juice - approx 2 tsp
Oil from Riverford mixed olives with chilli and garlic (or olive oil, coriander seed, cumin seed, dried chilli)

Cook the Falafel bites

Chop the potatoes fairly small & par boil for around 5 minutes

Fry the onion in the oil & spices for a few minutes then add the potatoes

Chop & the butternut squash and put in the potato water.

Add the butternut squash to the frying pan.  Then add the chopped tomatoes, some water, the lemon juice & the kale.

Goes well with Nethergate Lemon Head beer

Dwarf puffers again

We've got some more dwarf puffers. One never looked that happy and disappeared after a week or two, but the other is happy and seems to have reduced the number of snails in the tank.

Dwarf puffers deceased

We found the second of the dwarf puffers we bought recently dead today. The first died earlier in the week. One had curvature of the spine, and since it was the only fish effected it seems most likely that it was genetic.

Dwarf Puffers

We bought two dwarf pufferfish (Carinotetraodon travancoricus) on Saturday.  I chose them partly because I like puffers, but also because they should keep the snail numbers down.  We think we're got a male and a female, but it's not that easy to tell when they're young.  They're currently the smallest fish in the tank at 1.5-2cm and should grow to around 4cm.  I've researched dwarf puffers on the internet and found differing opinions on how aggressive they are, some people have found them to be extremely aggressive, but so far ours are fairly peaceful.  There seems to be a consensus that they need an interesting tank with plenty of places to explore, which hopefully our tank is.

Links:
The Puffer Forum - Carinotetraodon travancoricus & Sexing dwarf puffers

Current tank contents:
Black Neons (6)
4 Kuhli Loach (4?)
Dwarf Puffers (2)

Kuhlis get everywhere!

I cleaned out the tank and filter before we went to Maidenhead Aquatics to get some new fish.  After squeezing the dirt out the filter sponges, rinsing the dirt and algae cleaning the ceramic hula hoops and putting everything back together I noticed a kuhli loach in the bucket.  The only way it could have got there is if it had swum into the filter.

I didn't want to use a net to get the kuhli back into the tank as kuhlis have a spine near their eye so I gradually reduced the amount of water in the bucket until I could transfer the kuhli into a jug, and then allowed it to swim back into the tank.  We'd only seen three of four kuhli loaches we bought at one time, so I initially assumed that this was the fourth, despite it being significantly smaller.  However I thought I'd seen something else in the bucket.  A bit more investigation revealed that there was a dead kuhli of a similar size to the live one, so the small kuhli must be a second generation.  I've not seen any other small kuhlis but since they are so good a hiding we may have more than we think.  On our trip to Maidenhead AquaticsI picked up some sponge filters to go over the filter intake to prevent it happening again.

Kuhli loaches

Our last catfish died a while ago, and we were down to one black neon so on 26th January we bought some new fish - 4 kuhli loaches (Pangio kuhlii) and 5 more black neon tetras.  The kuhli loaches all hid after putting them in the tank and we've not seen them all together since.  At one point we didn't see any for so long that I thought they must have all died, but we then started seeing them again.  Since then we've seen three together so one might have died, but they are so good at hiding that we'll probably never know.

Our current tank contents:
Black Neons (6)
4 Kuhli Loach (4)
Pineapple Swordtails (some of various ages)

Pagham Harbour

We visited Pagham Harbour again and explored the north side of the harbour. We saw a sparrowhawk and a hobby. The bird lists in the visitor centre said that ospreys and avocets had been seen the week before but we didn't see any.

Hook with Warsash Local Nature Reserve

In the morning we went for a walk by the Itchen looking for the Kingfishers which I saw on Saturday, but they weren't around. I had seen two just below Woddmill on Saturday when the tide was out. The tide was in today so catching fish there would have been more difficult. We did see a very late duckling though.

In the afternoon we went to Hook with Warsash Nature Reserve and saw Black-tailed Godwit, a Heron, Little Egret, Oyster Catchers and a cabbage white caterpillar on some sea kale. It's the first time we've been there but we'll be back.

Eling

There are a couple of places that we've explored around Eling. Both times we've been there we drove in via Jacob's Gutter Lane and Eling Hill and parked in the car park which is on the right just before you reach the toll bridge.

A Cricket and Bats by the Itchen

Went for an an evening walk by the Itchen and saw a Dark Bush Cricket. By the river we saw three kinds of bats. Pipistrelle which are the most common British bat, Daubenton's which are a similar size to Pipistrelle but skim low over the water and Noctule bats which are larger (35cm wingspan) and fly higher up.

Lacewing Larva

We found this insect under a leaf on the buddleja. Putting an unknown bug on my hand might not have been the best plan as I think it might have tried to bite me. I didn't know what this was but I uploaded the photo to flickr and posted it to the British Insects and other arthropods pool and within hours flickr user mountainashe identified it as a lacewing larva. There's two more pictures of it here and here

Winchester Passion

On Good Friday we went to The Winchester Passion a passion play in the streets of Winchester. It was really good although the sheer number of people often made if difficult to see or hear what was going on. There's a group on flickr with people photos of the event: Flikr: Winchester Passion 2008

Snowdonia

Sunday

We went for a walk from Talsarnau along the estuary towards Pont Briwet (the road and rail bridge over the Afon Dwyryd). Saw some canada geese and baby sole in Afon Dwyryd. We walked back over the hills via Llyn Tecwyn Uchaf and through some steep forest paths. Saw a couple of hares too.

Monday
Went to Criccieth Castle then had lunch on the beach. Went to Pwllheli and walked round the east side of the harbour and saw some herons and some jellyfish.

Tuesday
Went up Snowdon from Nantgwynant via the south ridge going to the summit of Allt Maenderyn on the way. All along the ridges we were in cloud. The station and cafe at the top of Snowdon are being rebuilt at the moment so as we neared the summit we were greeted buy the slightly odd sight of construction equipment. After stopping for our last sandwich we descended on the watkin path. Our route was nearly the reverse of route 6 on High Trek Snowdonia.

Wednesday
A journey on the Caernarfon end of the Welsh Highland Railway. We travelled from Caernarfon to behind Beyer-Garratt #138, had lunch at Rhyd Ddu then got the train back to Waunfawr pulled byCastell Caernarfon. We looked round the gardens at Antur Waunfawr, then went for a pint at the Snowdonia Park Brewpub next to the station.

Thursday
Went to Penrhyn Castle - as well as the usual stuff you'd expect from a national trust stately home it has Britain's only industrial railway museum which included locomotives Penrhyn quarries and the Dinorwig quarries which we visited on Friday!

Friday
Went to the National Slate Museum in Llanberis. It is situated in the Dinorwig quarry workshops and is next to the Llanberis lake railway. It has the largest waterwheel in Britain (it is huge!), demonstrations of slate splitting (which can still only be done by hand), and old workers cottages which had been furnished to reflect slate workers houses in 1860, 1901 and 1969. The cottages were tiny - about the size of the one bedroom cottage we were staying in - yet the 1860 one had a family of 5 plus two lodgers living in it. We also took a look at the only working incline (though it wasn't in use when we were there) and took what I though would be a short walk up to a viewpoint.

Duke Special

We went to see Duke Special on Friday. They were supported by Beth Rowley who also did some vocals in Duke Special's set. I found some photos on Flickr. I love the fact that someone will have taken great photos of almost anything and you can find them in a couple of minutes!

Pagham Harbour

We went to Pagham Harbour on Saturday afternoon. There weren't as many birds as last time we were there but we did see shell ducks, a lapwing, curlews, oyster catchers, swans and little egrets. There were loads of dead crabs - some big ones, and loads of little one washed up around the harbour. And dead cuttlefish - I've seen the cuttlebones that are washed up on the shore but this one still had skin and flesh. Something (seagulls?) had eaten the tentacles but we could see where the ink sack must have been.

In the evening we went across to West Wittering and had a Barbeque on the beach. Paul and Kerry both took some photos. Fortunately for me they both managed to get some great shots of the sunset - I don't remember it at all - I must have been to busy enjoying the food.

Photos:
Pagham Harbour
Barbeque at West Wittering [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Weald & Downland Open Air Museum

Went to the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum. Loads of old buildings and information about how people used to live. We bought some stone ground bread flour and some honey and Jenny made some bread the next Saturday. It was the best bread and honey I can remember.

Portland

We went to Chesil Beach for lunch then explored around Portland Bill. We saw some big prawns and fairly large fish in rockpools - gobys and blennies I think.

On the way out of Portland we stopped at the viewpoint above Portland Harbour and had a look round. We saw a mouse and a yellowhammer.

There's some more photos in my Portland album on picasaweb.