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Who am I?

Hey there, welcome to my blog. My name is Sian, I’m 28, I live in Scotland and I have a chronic illness called M.E.  What is M.E.? M.E stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis. It is also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).  How long have I had ME?  I developed M.E 2 years ago at the start of September. I was about to start college to study beauty therapy and the day before I had a headache. Ok, no big deal, everyone has headaches. By the evening it had developed into a migraine (you know, when you can’t stand the light, or sounds, and you feel like you’re going to throw up). I didn’t think too much of it and hoped it would be gone by the morning. Well, it didn’t go. In fact, I had that same migraine constantly for 6 months straight.  What did you do?  I got on with it. I started college the next day, and I attended every day I was supposed to until I couldn’t handle it anymore, which was Christmas 2016.  What ...
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The Big Garden Birdwatch

It has been the Big Garden Birdwatch over the last few days. 

It is carried out by the UK charity and organisation, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) on an annual basis. They ask people to spend one hour documenting how many birds of certain species come into your garden at any one time. It is so they can keep a record of bird numbers and they use the data provided by the public to watch for any bird declines. I believe this was the 40th year of the birdwatch taking place. 


I have talked about the birds in our garden before. If you'd have asked me this time last year if I was interested in birds or could single out a certain bird call and what it means, I would have stared blankly at you. I never imagined I would get into birdwatching, but having time on my hands and noticing them living out their lives suddenly became interesting to me. Now I'm able to identify many different species, I know when a blackbird or robin is in distress or scared by their call, and I know what type of feeders they all prefer. When I become interested in something, I really throw myself into it. Watching them living out their lives and giving them a helping hand has become a big part of my life, they're almost like pets. 

I like that it is a hobby I can enjoy on good and bad days, if I'm stuck indoors having a bad ME day, I can still get pleasure out of watching them. 

I'm very much looking forward to when Mr. B and the blackbirds start to sing in spring, and when they start to nest and have chicks. Last year we had little fledgling dunnocks chasing each other around the garden making 'squee-ing' type noises, and even the house sparrows came down to play with them. It was a magical few weeks and we did everything we could to protect them. Do you have any wildlife in your garden? Let me know in the comments. 



Today, during one hour, we saw:
  • 2 collared doves
  • 1 wood pigeon
  • 3 blackbirds 
  • 16 house sparrows (ackie number for us, it is usually between 20-30)
  • 7 starlings 
  • 1 robin 
  • 2 dunnocks 
  • 1 magpie
  • 1 feral pigeon  

Thanks for reading 
That ME Girl 
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  1. Siobhan J4 February 2019 at 04:37

    Good variety of birds. We had mainly robin's in our garden and some blue tits and a great tit (No sniggering haha). Not many house sparrows though but we used too. Not sure what Dunnocks are - are they native to Scotland?

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    1. thatmegirl4 February 2019 at 05:21

      Dunnocks used to be called hedge sparrows but were renamed as they don't have the traits of sparrows. They're quite plain looking birds that shuffle across the grass and are ground feeders. They have an interesting err.. love life, goggle will tell you more haha

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