The Greatest Artist

“Frost is the greatest artist in our clime – he paints in nature and describes in rime.” – Thomas Hood

The starlings’ mission is to find the frost-free fringes

Snowy Days

A few glimpses from the last couple of days

January Jottings

A miscellany  of pictures from the last few days…

Whatever weather is forecast it is very rare to have a day without some glimpse of brightness:

Bird activity has been increasing as breeding territories are claimed.  Wrens are usually a peripheral vision flit but this one posed outside the kitchen window:

Cagney has always been Queen of the Stump

Here she does a preening performance for an admiring audience

The drake she hatched in the summer is now rehearsing his crest raising

He is just one of the Surplus Males who are surviving (temporarily) due to their gorgeousness.  Here is another:

Some corners still have an Autumn flavour

while others show a promise of Spring

These winter visitors remain omnipresent

Some things never change

Tracks in the snow

One of the exciting things about snow is the the evidence it provides of passing traffic.

Jessie sees it as her mission to leave her imprint in as many places as possible

But before she obliterated everything today it was possible to glimpse rabbits

pheasant

rabbit turning a corner suddenly

and fox (maybe seen by rabbit turning a corner suddenly)

Some other snowy pictures from today:

Murmur in the Mist

In this wintry season

we have an ambivalent relationship with our visitors

They can be spectacular. as individuals

and of course en masse.

As the light fades

our Ash Tree cohort gets restless

until the time is right

to leave for the night

joining the swelling throng

to form a few swirls above

before heading off North-West

The occasional window strike

is still a loss, but one can’t help thinking the flock might not notice.

Meanwhile – a dog in a box

A Day of White and Grey

Premature blooming

A little bit of sunshine

and some perky little flowers think they can show a bit of colour. It is much appreciated but we know they are being a bit silly.

We make more business like preparations

while continuing to harvest last year’s bounty

The Drainage in the Lower Field…

…is a never-ending task:

Half a moon, one woodpecker and two geese.

Birds in Wrong Places

Its the age old problem of too many males who have no productive use.

As part of the convoluted series of events which resulted in our current duck miscellany Cagney, our then sole Muscovy female, hatched two eggs resulting in a Muscovy Drake and a Cayuga Drake (don’t ask)

Elsewhere we have a very stable Cayuga flock cared for by long-standing Drake Lucky so this one has no place there. The Muscovy Drake

Is very handsome but we already have one too many resulting in John getting rather worn out:

(John is neither male nor Muscovy – don’t ask)

Meanwhile our broody batch in the summer resulted in three hens and three cockerels, which I suppose is reasonable, if a little unhelpful. One cockerel was disposed of quickly but we thought we would bring on the other two as we did have a vacancy – one vacancy. So now someone has to go:

To balance things here are two birds in the right place: