Wednesday, 10 February 2010 - This morning's birds and one cat by the fireplace

We had a very light snowfall overnight and in addition to that it was freezing, so a crisp white sugar coating over the garden this morning.  This disappeared almost completely before midday with the morning supnshine.  The afternoon was miserable, with the odd snow and sleet shower and it's bitter in the wind.  I put out crumbled bread which I had fried in bacon fat and yesterday's catfood, together with grated cheese, bread crusts and boiled potatoes cut in half.  The bluetits were down on the table before I had got inside the door.

There were two little brown birds on the garden wall and one on the terrace floor beneath the wall and the first was a house sparrow - Passer domesticus. 

The second was a dunnock - Prunella modularis, which has much more in the way of grey plumage.

I am not a really a bird person and have only really "discovered" birds while I've been photographing the garden and am thoroughly enjoying them with the aid of a reference book written in French.  It's a good job photographs are not language dependant!  Luckily, I have a good friend in England connected to the RSPB who confirms my identification if I am in any doubt.  I first met him on a morning when he was netting and ringing birds for future identification, when my younger son was a member  of the Young Ornithologists Club in Gloucester, England.

This is a great tit - Parus major, who kept coming back again and again, and I managed to catch him as he turned round to see the movement I had made.  There seem to be so many great tits and blue tits around at the moment.

The next little brown bird was below the birdtable on the terrace floor picking up dropped food.  She is a female chaffinch - Fringilla coelebs.

And here is a male chaffinch - not taken today, but on 9 January this year in the snow, just so you can see how showy he is compared with his counterpart.

 

And then there was a blackbird - Turdus merula, on the wall. I just love the yellow ring round his eye.

Here is his counterpart, browner than she looks in the falling snow, a young female blackbird, again taken on 9 January this year.

Lastly for today, not a bird, but Daisy, pretending she has no legs, on the rug in front of the woodburner.  We've just had another minor snowfall and I'm just hoping it won't be too bad out there when I wake up in the morning.