gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

One nice present this Christmas is that WordPress have changed the options for uploading pictures. There used to be three options, ‘large’ which was massive, ‘medium’ which was a bit too small and ‘thumbnail’ which was tiny. Now there is a much wider choice of picture sizes.

On the evening of the 24th we all went round to John and Anita’s for a Christmas Eve feast. On the way I photographed some of the Christmas lights on our neighbour’s houses.

John and Anita had produced photos of us all as place mats …..

… so we had to pose with them. Back row: Ian, Margaret, Janis, Andy and John. Front row: Kara, Anita and Amber.

John and Kara

Andy has the remains of a party popper in his hair whilst Kara does a Rudolph impersonation.

Amber looks a little glum……

… perhaps getting a makeover from Anita would cheer her up.

The girls were soon performing headstands  so it must have worked.

Christmas Day brought a most unusual treat. Our friends Nick and Jackie Hull who live close to Lytchett Bay reported on the 24th that a neighbour had found a duck in his garden. The duck proved to be a Red-breasted Merganser, a fairly common sea duck, with a child’s hair band wrapped around its bill. It had presumably picked up the discarded hair band when diving and had got entangled in it. The bird seemed in good condition but they contacted an animal rescue center who agreed to hold the bird overnight and check it out.

Nick contacted me and asked if I’d like to ring the bird. Having checked in the ringer’s manual that this was permissible I headed to their house on Christmas Day morning. The lady from the center came a bit later than expected and I felt I was in the way as their family was arriving for Christmas dinner. However the duck soon arrived and was  ringed and released at Lytchett Bay. It was in good health, if a little thin and we hope it had a good Christmas dinner as well.

Jackie Hull and her six month old granddaughter Leia

Female Red-breasted Merganser

Holding the Merganser just prior to release at Lytchett Bay. Photo by Nick Hull.

Returning to more traditional Christmas activities, I got home to find all the family had arrived. The grand opening of presents followed. Margaret and I had joined forces with John and Anita to buy them a computer tablet each. To say they were delighted was an understatement ….

… we hardly heard another thing from them all day.

… indeed everyone seemed fascinated by them. The capacity of tablets has greatly improved in recent years, as Moses required two of them just to download the Ten Commandments.

But the highlight of the day was the wonderful Christmas meal that Margaret cooked and being able to get together with my new extended family.