Small Birds

This morning, in order to escape the bitter east-southeasterly which has been blowing for days, I walked as much as possible through the woods where I was reasonably protected, though the wind was causing the tops of the trees to thrash around so much that, if any birds were singing - which I doubt, though it won't be long before the crossbills will be nesting - I wouldn't have heard them.

Inevitably, I had to walk some distance out of the protection of the trees and under a dismally grey sky which, later in the morning, began to give us the first flakes of the promised snow.

The pink-footed geese that pass over each day around 9am were flying low to get out of the wind but still struggled to maintain their V-shaped skeins.

With little to be seen or heard in the woods I came home and spent some time watching the small birds at their feeders at the front of the house. 

The main visitors to the sunflower kernel feeders were the siskins and goldfinches, which were, as always, heavily outnumbers by chaffinches.

However, it was good to see that the siskins were coming to the feeders in some numbers, which they haven't been in the recent past, and....

....that some of them are already very brightly dressed ready for the mating season.

On the far side of the road the peanut feeders were doing brisk business with coal and great tits; but one conspicuous and slightly worrying absentee were the blue tits.