Onimous skies

The sky says snow, but the forecast doesn't. It is, however, perishing out there – the wind is brrrrr. Poppy didn't quite destroy this particular ball and she did manage to carry it home, so no huff this time. 

What snow there is has turned to ice and it's going to be minus temperatures until midday tomorrow. I'm thankful that the pavements of my street have been gritted. Some pavements are treacherous!

Fred and I had a morning walk to the Rookery via the cafe where I treated myself to an egg bap. Despite the chill, we found a sunny bench to sit on. Out of the wind, it was fairly pleasant for a short while, then we had to move to warm up. We headed up through Biggin Wood and round by Norwood Park over some areas where we couldn't walk last week because of the mud – it's just crunchy with frost.

This morning when we woke, we thought we had a massacre on our hands – spots of blood everywhere. We looked around for bits of dead creature and then realised it was Juno. Poor thing has been in the wars, probably with the new tabby on the block. His outer left ear is pretty torn (bites, I think) and his belly is sensitive (locking-on claws, I reckon). He's been pretty downbeat all day but staying by my side when he can. Obviously, he's chosen white things to rest his ear on. It took a while to stop bleeding, but he's not blotting the white things now.

I've found a new webcam and a new animal! The first time I looked at the cam, a pine marten-like animal with a black body and yellow head was taking up most of the camera. Luckily, this cam has a wildlife identifier under it and I saw that this creature is tayra. Well, that's going to do me well in Scrabble from now on. Here's the link: Ecuador feeding platform. There's a clip of a tayra right at the bottom of the link.