January

A Happy New Year to all, including my poor birds who had to put up with another fall of snow yesterday. Then their breakfast was late and I practically had Mrs Blackbird tapping on the kitchen window in her impatience.

The thrush wasn’t far behind her, he’s cold and hungry and has lost his habitual shyness.

In fact there are now regularly two thrushes in the garden but I can’t tell them apart.

Hundreds of chaffinches.

I tried to count them but couldn’t so did a block count and scaled up across the garden.

The bramblings are still about. Mrs is shy and hangs back in the shrubs,

but Mr gets stuck right in.

I went for a walk up the hill this afternoon, the footprints showed many people had the same idea,

but they tailed off as I went further up, until eventually there was just me and what looked like the prints of a pogo-ing sheep.

It was beautiful still day. A lot of the pine trees have been felled recently, leaving stands of tall larch lone against the skyline.

High in these I could hear excited bird calls. Long tailed tits! At the absolute limit of my camera zoom but recognisable.

Then amongst the cheeping tits a flash of bright red and yellow… bigger, bulkier, acrobatic birds… parrots in snowy Scotland? No, cross bills! The first I have ever seen, feeding on the larch cones.

The boys are red and the girls are yellow/green. Both a welcome splash of colour in our monochrome landscape.