Wednesday 21 January 2015

Waiting for the dog.

Happy New Year to you all. This week I had to take Roxy for her haircut in the Forest of Dean. I have to wait for approximately 3 hours so I decided to spend it at Cannop ponds feeder station.
It was very cold, -3 Celsius, and grey. The sun that my weather app promised did not materialise.
I was sitting in my car with coat, snood and gloves on and shooting out of the window. The usual suspects were all there, but in addition I got visits from 2 Marsh Tits, a Grey Wagtail, a Reed Bunting, a GSW and a Long Tailed Tit. I did not get shots of the latter but it was nice to see him.
I felt sorry for the ground feeding birds like the Dunnock as the ground was solid, so I brushed some of the feed onto the floor. The Dunnock were soon joined by a small group of Chaffinch, a couple of male Blackbirds,  and a pair of male Mallards.

Dunnock.




















Blackbird,




 
 

The feeder table was extremely busy with birds flitting in and out every few seconds. Great Tit, Blue Tit, Marsh Tit and Coal Tit.























The Robins were extremely well behaved, there was the odd scurry between a couple but for most of the time there were 4 or 5 feeding alongside each other quite happily.



















In fact the birds that were doing the most squabbling were the Nuthatches, they spent almost as much time chasing each other off as feeding.



















The Grey Wagtail spent quite a lot of time under the feeder table, I felt sorry for him.





















The Great Spotted Woodpecker did not come to the table but I witnessed him take bread off the floor. something I didn't know they did, eat bread. I managed a shot of him a little way off. I say him because although you cant see it in this shot he had the red patch on his neck.



















all in all an interesting couple of hours.