You know that Winter is getting serious when the day's only sighting of the sun is a brief one, a peep from behind a fine curtain of mist; when....
....there's not a breath of wind and the air temperature, instead of showing some increase with the day, continues to drop allowing....
....the mist to solidify as filigree crystals of ice on exposed surfaces.
With the temperature in the garden not rising above -2.5C all day, it's a miserable existence for the small birds. At the front of the house there were as many as ten chaffinches feeding on the mixed seed, while in the back garden....
....several variations on what looked a first glance like blackbirds were joined by....
....the first starlings we've seen for a very long time, a species which, given the chance....
....would quickly empty all the feeders.
So we chased the starlings away and put out plenty of food for the other birds, which included chaffinches, goldfinches, blackbirds, wood pigeons and coal tits, such a feast that our resident robin, usually a trencherman for his food, found himself quite outfaced by it.
You know that Winter is getting serious when the day's only sighting of the sun is a brief one, a peep from behind a fine curtain of mist; when....
A beautiful photograph of Starling in winter plumage, Jon. They boost our native numbers after flying across from Scandanavia - along with the bird in the previous picture - a Fieldfare.
ReplyDeleteWhat's a lone fieldfare doing in our back garden? It's supposed to be in the fields with lots of its friends.
DeleteDo you have a 'macro' setting on your camera (and a steady hand) for those hoar frost subjects. It would be an interesting excersise to view different ice crystals close-up.
ReplyDeleteThat's about as good as I can get with my camera. Also, it was very cold....
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