the november and december freeze-and the return of the missile thrush

An early send home from school today and so spent an hour or so watching the garden birds cope with the snow. the starlings were present, for the first time since last time it snowed, and a variety of our "usuals". the bird table was proving an irresistible temptation to most birds who would willfully come and take some of the fruit we had put out for them! the first of these was the starlings who had to redeem themselves for their skiving behavior.

its sad to see the birds looking so sad and cold in the conditions, but we had done all we can-feeding and water. After all, we cant exactly invite them into the house (can we?)!

As you may have assumed from the title, our local mistle thrush has been around again, taunting me with his (or her) camera shyness. you may have also assumed that I have very bad spelling based on the title, but oh no! with this bird comes a frightful temper which is more like a missile!

however I was at by the window photographing starlings and blackbirds when he came and alighted on the pole feeder. he sat there for about 1min, checking the coast was clear and then...

flew straight onto the bird table right in front of me. I couldn't believe it. I managed to get some resonable shots before he flew off, but they look great!

after he left the other birds quickly came back. first of all was this blackbird who might, for all I know, have been trying to build a snowman on his beak! he did look quite comical, although most of it had fallen off by the time the camera was there and so the photos did him little justice.

a dunnock also came but was rather shouldered towards the edge by the bigger blackbird.

But then came a challenge! every year we seem to get starlings and blackbirds fighting at the birdtable (bad manners) and this year was no exception. only this year the starlinmgs seemed to be doing better than the blackbirds, maybe numbers, but it made for some decent photos!

And finally a robin came to join in the snow fun.

but for all this, the weather was pretty impressive. but after all, winter should be like this!