1. It was quite dark, 2. The windows are, in fact, less than clean (!), 3. The shots were taken hand held, and 4. I was trying to focus manually! So no excuses then....
We put out a range of food for the birds - nuts and sunflower seeds in holders, mixed seed, bread, cheese and left-over mashed potato on the ground. The variety attracts a wide range of birds.
First we have the very sociable Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits and Long Tailed Tits (my favourites), although the latter seem to be very comfortable on the floor as well!
We also get the Goldfinches, Chaffinches and Green finches but only the first two were seen that day.
Ooops, another Blue tit!
The Greater Spotted Woodpeckers have become very proficient at pecking nuts from the holders and they spend an age doing it too.
The Blackbirds love the bread but on this occasion they were determined to gobble up some of the crab apples available. Male and female are shown here.
The lovely Robin generally hops around pecking up anything available but also tries now and then to land on the seed holders - it all looks very frantic and is usually unsuccessful.
This Magpie was nosing around trying to spot where the squirrels had buried their nuts and acorns.
Another new visitor to our patio was this lovely Jay. It has been pouncing on the larger bits of bread and flying off to its favourite perch to gobble away. However, it too has learned to take nuts from the holders although it did not happen this time.
We also get visited by many Pheasants and one in particular has become almost tame. My mother calls it and sometimes it comes running up the garden to get its daily intake of seed. This one was just wandering around looking beautiful!
Then suddenly all the birds disappeared in a flurry of feathers...what had happened??
Oh yes! Dead-eyed Dick Sable had made an appearance and that was the end of my photo shoot for a while.
The lovely Robin generally hops around pecking up anything available but also tries now and then to land on the seed holders - it all looks very frantic and is usually unsuccessful.
This Magpie was nosing around trying to spot where the squirrels had buried their nuts and acorns.
Another new visitor to our patio was this lovely Jay. It has been pouncing on the larger bits of bread and flying off to its favourite perch to gobble away. However, it too has learned to take nuts from the holders although it did not happen this time.
We also get visited by many Pheasants and one in particular has become almost tame. My mother calls it and sometimes it comes running up the garden to get its daily intake of seed. This one was just wandering around looking beautiful!
Then suddenly all the birds disappeared in a flurry of feathers...what had happened??
Oh yes! Dead-eyed Dick Sable had made an appearance and that was the end of my photo shoot for a while.
.JPG)
