Pied Wagtail and Mystery Object

When I was walking back from Wormwood Scrubs on Saturday, I saw this little pied wagtail hopping around the base of a column in front of a building on our high street. It was searching for insects in the grass, and apparently having some success.

You can't easily tell, but it has a little aphid in its beak in this picture.

I didn't know what kind of bird it was until I looked it up. They're not uncommon but I don't remember ever seeing one before. I wish it would visit our garden and eat aphids!

Yesterday morning I tried to figure out what to do about readers who have subscribed to my blog via e-mail. You may remember that Blogger has told us that function, operated by Feedburner, is going to stop working in July. They suggest we download a list of our e-mail recipients and upload that list to another service -- but they don't suggest which service. They unhelpfully leave that to us.

Apparently there are some options, one of them being Mailchimp. But when I looked at the site I was deluged with terms like "segmentation," "marketing CRM," "behavioral targeting" and "transactional e-mail using API or SMTP." Clearly I was already in over my head.

So I have returned the old-fashioned "followers" button to my sidebar and I think that may be the best I can do. I apologize to those of you who want my blog posts in your e-mail but I just can't manage all that gobbledygook. Also, I think Mailchimp costs money.

If anyone else figures out a solution to this issue, let me know.

This was my Sunday project. I pricked out some of our seedlings into little pots where they can grow on individually. The seedlings are just not prospering this year. They're still really tiny, even after two months of "growing" on our dining room windowsill. I think part of the problem is the seed compost I used -- it's very fine and even though I water fairly frequently it was dry as dust yesterday. Maybe in this new compost they'll take off.

I'm also moving them outside. I'm over having them on the windowsill, just like I'm over sheltering our geraniums in the living room. Everything is back outside now and it's going to stay there. The weather is still chilly but no more freezes are expected so we're going to say it's spring, dammit.

For a while now, this curious object has been lying beneath one of the trees on our street. I finally picked it up to find out what it is.

So here's the "Shadows & Light" trivia question of the week -- what is it? Do you know?

I know now, having done some research. But I'm curious to see if anyone else recognizes it.

Here's a hint -- it's floppy, made out of rubber or silicone, and it's not a piece of something else. It's an object in its own right, though it's used in association with another object. If that makes sense.

In any case, it's pretty cool looking, I think. If it were cast in ceramic tile or carved into furniture it would be very Art Nouveau -- a design worthy of Alphonse Mucha.

And now I am off to work.

But first I have to type just one more line so my text lines up with the bottom of my photo -- there.