Thursday 30 December 2010

Our Brambling!

I've never had so many attempts at photographing a visiting bird as this! Every time I moved the camera up to my eye it would fly off, that is until I finally caught it unawares!
He had been visiting the garden for at least an hour before I managed to get these

From left to right goldfinch, brambling, great tit and another goldfinch


 While I was waiting I took a few more pics of some of today's garden visitors

oh look the siskins have stayed around!

tree sparrow and blue tit

collared dove

and just for comparison this is a chaffinch!

Tuesday 28 December 2010

The return of a winter favourite

The siskin are back! at the moment we only have a couple of females, the male usually appears a bit later on, so I am hoping we will get at least one of those too!
Siskins are pretty small birds, they never seem too nervous of humans, I have stood within inches of them watching them feed in the past.
Once on a family walk in my childhood, I found a bone lying on the ground amongst some leaves, goodness knows how I spotted it but I did! My mother and I took it along the our local museum in Taunton, where they identified it as a siskins pelvis. I had never seen a siskin at that time but I knew what they looked like as my favourite book was my 'Observer book of Birds' and the kind lady in the museum showed us a stuffed one that was in the very large collection of stuffed birds in the museum!
It took quite a few more years before I saw a living one, but now they are one of the birds I look out for every year in my garden at this time of year and this morning they arrived!

Monday 20 December 2010

Tuesday 7 December 2010

I want to get to there but I can't walk on this!

This is where I wanted to be.


But I need crampons to walk on this!
So I will have to enjoy the snow and frost from my garden for the time being and hope that the sun melts the ice a bit so I can walk the dog later!
 

Monday 6 December 2010

My foggy views

This is the track from our house which leads to a half mile long single track lane whch in turn takes us to a country lane and a further quarter of a mile of compact ice before reaching the relative safety of the clear main roads.


So best not to dwell on getting out, much better to enjoy what is around me here, even in the fog it still looks wonderful!