Thursday 14 January 2010

Snowy garden

The garden has been covered in snow and ice for the past week, but yesterday brought a proper covering of snow. I measured 4 inches in my back garden. Thankfully its thawing quickly which should mean that I can get into the the garden and start getting things sorted.

The carrots are still frozen and under snow but if the weather stay warm I may be able to dig them up at the weekend.



Here are a selection of photos. The Robin you can see in one of the photos is a regular visitor. It has very little fear of me and will often sit on the fence watching me breaking up and throwing bread in the garden. Any other bird would fly off as soon as the back door opens. This robin stays and watches.












I have also spotted and Redwing in the garden over the last few days. The first time I saw it I knew it was different but didn't get a good enough look. The next day I saw it again and noticed the red parts under the wings and the white flashes around the eye. If you look closely at the photo of the branches you can see the backside of a bird. That is the redwing. That was the best shot I got before it noticed me and flew away.







The first bird in the garden looks to be the blackbird as the footprints have been captured in the snow. When I first looked out of the window these were the only footprints to disturb the new covering of snow.











I have been putting a lot more food out for the birds these past few weeks. Bread, biscuits, rice and grated cheese. The favourite traditional food seems to be the nuts. With starlings, sparrows, blue tit, coal tit and magpies all having a munch. The seed feeder is less in favour though with very few birds going to it. It may be that the position is not great but during the summer last year it was so popular with the sparrows I was filling it almost every other day.

Monday 4 January 2010

New year freeze


Its 2010 and the garden is frozen solid. There was a little snow before Christmas but that turned into ice by the next morning and lasted about 3 days. Since then there has been warmer weather and now another cold snap to start the new year.

The carrots in the photo where dug up on the 12th December. Since then the ground has been frozen solid so I am unable to get to the others. I hope the ice is not destroying them but I will not know until it warms up again.

The car thermometer said it was -5 at 08:00 this morning. That's chilly. I have been removing the ice from the bird bath each morning and replacing with hot water. The birds do use it, mostly for drinking but sometimes even to splash about in.