We had a dusting of snow yesterday afternoon but during the still of the night it started again, and then the sky cleared so we had an intense ground frost. The resulting inch of snow is crisp, even and powdery, but it's sitting on a sheet of ice from earlier rain and snow-melt so, even though we set out for a walk along the Golspie front in this morning's cheerful sunshine, we turned back and spent time instead....
....watching the birds in the garden. There are plenty of tits - great, blue and coal - who are always first to find the extra food we've been putting out, followed by the....
....enterprising chaffinches, which are already looking very smart in their breeding plumage. We've been keeping a special eye open for greenfinches which were regularly in the garden but they've completely disappeared, so we do hope they haven't started to suffer again from trichomonosis which badly affected them a few years ago.
However, for sheer entertainment value there's nothing to beat the robins. For some time we've been amused observers of the strife between the garden robin and the invading graveyard robin but now things have been hugely complicated by the arrival of at least two other robins. There's so much chasing around going on, along with sometimes three-way fights, that it's been almost impossible to identify the new arrivals although....
....one of them has mastered the art of perching on the fat cake. He needs it - they're so engrossed in their rivalries that there's hardly time to stop for a meal, and if they do have a spare moment, they....
....tend to use it to harass any innocent bystanders, in particular the innocuous dunnocks.
Add to these the sparrows, blackbirds, starlings and jackdaws, all of which are regular though not always welcome visitors, and there's never a dull moment in our garden.
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