I’ve been playing with the field recorder that I [bought last month](https://strandlines.blog/2021/04/29/sound_recorder/).It is certainly a step up from using a phone or compact camera. Here’s a 10 minute recording of rain and birdsong from my garden.
Author: Stephen James
Last week, a woodpecker attacked the nest box in which the great tits were nesting. It pecked two large holes but seems to have not touched the eggs. Still, the great tit pair have abandoned it. Nature does seem harsh at times. On Friday my wife spotted the woodpecker having a crack at the blue tit box. I left work a little early so I could come home and add fortifications. I attached more wood to the outside of the box and then used chicken wire to add a further deterrent. All the while the parents were coming and going with food for the six chicks. They told me off, I would move out the way and they just got in with it. The things we do! So far, there has been no more woodpecker vandalism.
Sometimes blogging seems to be about *not* hitting the publish button.I frequently have ideas for posts related to mental health, make notes and write drafts, only to decide when it comes to it, not to publish. So I’ve made myself reflect on why. Confidence is one issue; it goes without saying that you make yourself vulnerable blogging about this stuff. Couple that with the way anxiety saps your confidence anyway and, well, you’re already up against it before you’ve even started!Then there is the matter of authenticity. A few weeks ago, a brief exchange with a friend on the topic got me thinking about how it relates to writing about mental health/illness. When I decided to write about my experiences I felt it was important to try to be authentic. It didn’t go through my mind in so many words, but that was the idea. I wanted to be honest. If I was going through a crap phase, I’d write about that. If things were going well, then I’d write about that. Despite those symptoms that are common to an anxiety disorder, dealing with mental illness is a very individual experience. To try and hide behind cliches would be both disingenuous and pointless. All of this feeds into the question of how much to write about.Over the winter there have been times where things were pants. Not as bad as in the past but I was aware I was slipping into some very unhelpful thought patterns. Those pesky cognitive distortions getting the upper hand again. I would try and write about them. But I would get so far only to then question why I was doing so. Partly it was the confidence thing. But also, no one wants to read about every time things are a bit shit. This is not a teenage diary. Rather, I see blogging as a kind of marginalia to day to day experience. Authenticity does not equate to an unfiltered mind dump; it is not about writing everything. It can be selective without sacrificing honesty. The final factor (at least, of those I can think of right now) which can stop me from posting is striving for the perfect edit. I imagine this is a trap that many fall into, whether it is about grammar or putting a point across well. Given that life is a work in progress, and therefore so is blogging, I have to allow for the fact that a thought process does not need to have come to a tidy resolution in order for it to be written about. An unfinished thought, if that is as far as I have currently reached, is as authentic as a fully fledged idea.So if you take a lack of confidence, perfectionism and the questions around the meaning of authenticity, it’s no surprise that many ideas never get anywhere near the blog. I think I am too hard on myself.
My son and I are going to set up a Minecraft server today for him and his friends. The deal is that a bike ride comes first, in order to use up some of the large amounts of excitement and energy and bring things back to a calmer level. How very parent-y of me.
Managed a look into the blue tits nest box today, having spotted the parents leaving (do they qualify as parents before the chicks hatch?) This is a good sized clutch of eggs – it amazes me that such a small bird can produce so many. More data for the Nest Record Scheme. An [article on the BTO](https://www.bto.org/understanding-birds/species-focus/blue-tit) website explains that:> An average clutch of Blue Tit eggs contains roughly 0.5 g of calcium, which might not sound like a lot; but given that there is only about 0.6 g of calcium in a Blue Tit skeleton, this represents a significant investment for the female and it is likely that she will need to source this from the environment, presumably in the form of fragments of snail shell and other calcium-rich material.
With our weekly veg box, it never ceases to entertain me that we get an email alert if kohlrabi is due to be included in the next delivery. So we can change the order. Kohlrabi continues to be a complete mystery to me. One that I have no desire to solve.
I spotted our resident Great tits were away from the nest box so popped the inspection camera in for a peek.They have been busy!
Watched [Mortal Engines](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1571234/) for a family film night. My son is a big fan of the books – I must read them myself. I know it got a bit of a panning, but I thought it was pretty good. Yes, at times it was derivative. Yes, at times the dialogue was clunky. But it had some good visuals and the story was enjoyable – we had a good time.
Two weeks ago I checked our various nest boxes and the one usually occupied by great tits was completely empty.I assumed that they weren’t going to use it this year but in the last week we have noticed the male singing away nearby and one or the other of the pair leaving the box a few times.A quick check with my inspection camera on Sunday revealed a completed nest and at least one egg.They’ve not hung around then! Glad to have them back again.
Finished reading Donald J Robertson’s [Stoicism and the Art of Happiness](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17841317-stoicism-and-the-art-of-happiness). A pretty easy read and good introduction to modern Stoicism. If I had to give it one criticism I’d say it is a tad repetitive, I would imagine partly because it’s part of a Teach Yourself series. I will probably read it through again in a bit more detail in due course.Delving into Stoicism, I’d not realised at all that it has experienced a resurgence in the last few years. Which I’m glad about because given I have a pretty contrary nature, I will often shy away from something if it’s currently a ‘thing’. The impression I get is, like anything that gets into the public imagination, it has attracted the genuinely inquisitive, but also bandwagoners. It also has its critics and I’m very happy to read well-reasoned arguments pointing out its flaws as I wouldn’t want to accept an idea without looking at it from all angles. And I’d rather read something of that nature than articles of the cringe-inducing [‘mind hack’](https://thriveglobal.com/stories/stoicism-ancient-mind-hack/) variety. Stoicism has a lot going for it but also many questions. Which is fine.