Just the other day I was looking back on my blog to see when the killdeer usually show up and over the last few years it has been the end of March, so we have been keeping an eye out for them hoping they would return – and today they did. However, we normally have a single pair each year but today there are four birds. They all seem to be getting along, so not sure if it is two pairs, or perhaps young from a previous year with the parents.
Last year the pair had four babies but they got killed by another killdeer that turned up unexpectedly, so we only had babies for a short while. Hopefully they will do better this year – perhaps the parents have bought baby sitters with them to help LOL. It will be interesting to watch the dynamics as they next and have young.
Other birds that have now arrived include robins and a possible sighting of the flicker, still to be confirmed. The raccoons are about as are the chipmunks and of course the squirrels are always about regardless of the weather. Since we haven’t had any major bad weather the deer are not about as much as they have been in the past which is a shame.
Talking of the weather - it is all over the place lately. We really haven’t had a winter this year, just a few days of snow here and there and some cold days (including today), but on the whole nothing compared to the previous years we have been here. The weekend looks to be cold and rainy, but next week is looking warmer and sunny.
Over the weekend we took the girls to Ottawa and spent the night there. We visited Parliament Hill and the river and canals. In the grounds of parliament there is a cat rescue area. Lots of cats live in an outdoor area and are free to come and go but are fed regularly. It was here that the girls saw a groundhog who had decided he was an honorary cat and was living quite happily with them eating leaves. He was much smaller and darker than the groundhog we had in our garden but at least they saw one. Later afternoon we took them to the Hard Rock Cafe for a very nice meal and then headed back to the hotel.
Us old fogies stayed in for the evening whilst they went out clubbing. However we found out in the morning that they could not find the clubs they were looking for and ended up coming back to the hotel quite early and watched TV.
On the second day in Ottawa the girls went on their own way and needless to say they went shopping! I just fail to see how anyone can shop for hours and hours. We left them at about 10.30 am and met up with them again at 6pm – and they were still shopping!
Sunday we went into Belleville so they could – yes – do more shopping! Lots of peanut butter M&M’s later (apparently you cannot get them in the Uk we went home. Spent the rest of the day relaxing as we had an early start on Monday to get to the airport for their early morning flight.
We got up at 4am and there was a raccoon in the garden so we quickly called the girls who were starting to stir to come see. Even though we see the damn things in the garden most evenings since they arrived not one had visited – typical. So not they had seen raccoons and groundhogs!
We checked them into their flight online which allowed us some extra time to get to the airport. The drive there is normally a maximum of 2 hours and we allowed 3.5 hours, however due to horrendous delays with traffic in Toronto where we hardly moved for over an hour we managed to miss the flight. Now we have travelled all over the world on both business and pleasure and have never ever missed a flight. When we got to checkin the woman told us that “You have missed it by 17 minutes, go over there and buy new flight” charming!
We went “over there” and were told that the tickets they had purchased were not transferrable and they would have to buy new ones. At that point there were lots of tears from fed up daughter and I think the booking clerk felt sorry for her and agreed to rebook them for a smaller fee of $100 each which I paid on our credit card. The trouble was this was 8am and the flight wasn’t until 11.25 pm.
We had to decide whether to go home and come back again later but the girls said they would stay at the airport and wait. They had charged their PSP up so would play games and wander round. We stayed with them for an hour or so and then made our way back home after lots of hugs and tears.
We finally heard back from them today and they arrived home okay but have colds – a result of airline air no doubt.
From the time their original flights with Zoom were cancelled due to going into receivership to the very end it was a flight nightmare. Good job all the bits in the middle went well to make up for it!
