Birds at the Sink

I have never minded washing up the dishes. It's a brainless job so I try to organise things so there is something else to do at the same time - like watching the builders working in the next-door housing development, or the small birds at the many feeders hanging along the side of the summer house to the right of this picture.

Recently, though, I've built a feeding platform that runs along the bottom of the window immediately in front of the sink, to which several birds - like our resident male blackbird in the picture above - now come for their deluxe mixed grain. Unusually, it was the chaffinches which first plucked up the courage to visit it, followed by the coal and blue tits, followed by the blackbirds, followed by the sparrows. Some of the visitors have become....

....quite brazen, like this blackbird. It carries on eating however close I put my face or my camera to the glass.

I'm not sure what sort of blackbird it is, except that it's not one of the local males as they have very black feathers and an orange beak. It may be a local female, or perhaps a Scandinavian immigrant, male or female.

It's tough weather for the birds. We're under the cosh of a strong, cold westerly which is bringing in heavy showers which bounce over Bheinn Bhraggie to catch us unawares. In some ways it's been like an October day, with bright, sunny intervals splashing rainbows across the clouds, but mostly, with temperatures struggling to reach 5C, it has felt like winter.

Which makes me wonder why this pied wagtail is still here. Most of the Scottish ones, and particularly those who summer in the Highlands, move south for the winter, so usually we don't see any until early spring, but this one was hopping around on the Golspie sea wall yesterday, looking very much at home.

Go south, young man....