Another snow day

6 January 2010

Just as I was bemoaning the lack of anything blogworthy and the fact I’d not yet written anything in the new year, another pile of snow came to town. Not as much as before, but enough to keep Mum off school and my head turned to the window, seriously impeding any progress I may have been trying to make with, well, anything.

I put my big 70-200mm f2.8 lens onto the camera and stood by the window to photograph the birds that came to feed – a handy side effect being that I could warm my freezing legs against the radiator at the same time. There’s a coconut half, filled with my lard and seed mixture, hanging from the laburnum outside my office window, as well as a seed feeder.

The pretty robin was more suited to the coconut, scrambling somewhat at the seed feeder, but ultimately managing to grab a seed to munch.

The sparrows are much more able at the feeder and a whole crowd of them often queue up on the branches of the tree. Either waiting patiently, or divebombing whoever’s currently in their way, depending on their level of hunger, I suppose.

Unable to think of a better retort, this sparrow simply resorts to sticking his tongue out at his mate.

This chaffinch – in need of a comb – was another regular visitor in the cold today, clearing up the seeds on the ground that the picky sparrows throw disdainfully out of the feeder.

And then there’s the blue tit. There are two of them who bounce around the laburnum, picking up invisible insects from the branches, swinging from the coconut as they feed and taking seeds from the feeder. But mostly they just flit from branch to branch so damn fast that you haven’t got much of a hope of focussing on them before they disappear from your viewfinder again.