Sunday 9 January 2011

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.

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

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

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Hundreds of chaffinches.

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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,

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but Mr gets stuck right in.

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

pine 1

pine 3

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green 1

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yellow

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

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