walnutwhip

Aww thank you for looking after Sophie, she's beautiful. I have a general, wild magpie question I'm hoping you can help with- I often feed my cats outside (wet cat food) and inevitably magpies sweep in for the remains of their meals. I suspect they may be the exact same magpies every time- is this likely? Is cat food ok for them to eat? I guess so because of the carrion thing and because they keep eating it? There are I think 3 or 4 and none have any discerning marks and in fairness to magpies, they all look pretty similar so I just can't tell but I'm well aware that corvids are intelligent creatures so it would make sense to me that they would know and protect a regular food source. Is there anything I can provide for them that would keep them away from my cats' food? Are they the same magpies? Will they recognise me? Also, a related corvid story- I was once cycling down the road and came across a near-dead crow who'd been hit by a car. There was a tree on the pavement next to him and it was FULL of crows all cawing and flapping about in an obvious state of distress/anxiety/something like that- what was actually going on there? I picked the injured crow up and put him at the base of the tree- he was obviously going to die so I just thought it would be better for him if he was under the tree with the other crows- and when I'd done that, the crows in the tree calmed down, what happened? Did I do the right thing according to corvid law? I'm glad someone takes them in, I feel like in the UK they get ignored or are thought of badly in some way when they're all over the place, and that people are more interested in robins or starlings or wrens. Only today I saw a magpie with an especially green tail and thought how lovely it was. Say Hi to Sophie for me!

You sound like you have the most fascinating job, I can't tell you how envious I am! Ideas come out of my head all the time, for books, pictures, projects, photos, businesses, ways to improve things, lots of stuff, so much I feel overwhelmed and just ignore the majority of them then get annoyed when I see someone's done the same thing a year later, what can I do to take advantage of this rather than just feeling deluged all the time? Also, I have an extremely dull office job and have always wondered if spending so much time doing what people call mind-numbing work can literally have that effect, I wondered what you thought? Thanks.

I have lucid dreamt for as long as I can remember and I don't understand why anyone would want to pursue or train themselves to LD. Like, yeah there's a novelty aspect to it but waking up day after day thinking the last 8 hours of bizarre occurrences might have happened is disturbing and sometimes distressing, I would love to stop LD, it is akin to having a nightmare every night. Why do people want to lucid dream?