elhawk's photostream  

These long tailed tits are intermittent visitors to my garden. They appear, stay around a couple of days then disappear and might reappear again at any time - maybe after a couple of weeks, maybe sooner maybe longer. As a species they move around the countryside over a wide area in small family groups, unlike other tit species that tend to have smaller more localised territories. They feed in the hedgerows and woodland edges. When they do visit gardens they prefer those with trees or tall bushes. They are very entertaining to watch flitting restlessly around in the branches of a tree with their tails flicking this way and that. Often they like to feed upside down like the one here on the left. Note how he is grasping a morself of food in one claw. I have never seen such a thing with other small garden birds.

The return of the hawk. You may have seen an earlier shot of mine of this watchful hunter, same perch as before. He seems to be becoming a regular visitor to my garden these days.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEnJDaqT3-0

Saying goodbye now to New Orleans with a shot of the entrance to the City's tribute to its most famous and most loved son. Just a shame one cant really enjoy much of the park itself at present, apart from Congo Square which it incorporates, due to ongoing repair work in the wake of extensive damage at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Let's hope the park will soon be returned to what apparently was its former glory. In the meantime a last musical farewell in the shape of one of Louis' Hot Five classic numbers recorded in 1928 - West End Blues!

I passed this empty New Orleans house while I was crossing town looking for Congo Square. On seeing it two thoughts struck me. For one why was such a lovely looking old building lying uninhabited and unused, and clearly judging by the broken and boarded windows, and weeds growing up around the steps by the two front doors, had been such for some time. And second considering as I had been told there were still quite large numbers of homeless in New Orleans post Katrina, one might expect the house to have been squatted. The chances are in a similar situation in many European cities it probably would have been. Maybe in USA squatters dont have the same at least temporary rights as they do in say the UK and the Netherlands for example (?), both countries where in the past I have myself squatted, though that was many years ago.

New Orleans, Louisiana.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LFrTmxNs8