BIRDS IN THE GARDEN

Well, Happy New Year, to be conventional...

I bought myself a Canon PowerShot SX210 IS camera (in purple!) - it's the one that's shown in the ad of huge insects being biked around St.Mark's Square in Venice - but it's more bloomin' technology to get used to. And the manual is on disk so anything you want to know you have to wake up the computer etc. etc. However, I took lots of closeups of birds in the garden, all dull, grey days, and deleted the majority. It's not easy to get shots of birds when the focus is so close and you can't hold the camera steady...

I took a series of these dodging the seed feeder in the foreground which was swinging in the breeze and this is the one that shows this great spotted woodpecker to best advantage. All these pics are taken from the comfort of my armchair about 10' away from the double glazed window so, not too bad.

This was just a piece of luck, a couple of greenfinches squabbling over the seed cake. These flat seed cakes are made with a recipe I found on themagiconions.blogspot.com and they're OK and easy to make but need a better way of attaching the hanging loop, which tends to pull out after a few days of pecking by the birds. Or perhaps I should make a better job of it in the first place!

A couple of wagtails were regular visitors while there was snow on the ground but haven't seen them since it's cleared (for this time). He's wearing his thermal underwear to keep his body heat in. Birds look 'pretty' like this, all puffed-up, but it's a survival mechanism.

Still grey, dark and 'orrible though the forecast is for cold weather to return in a day or two. Ugh, roll on spring!