When I woke up on Thursday, this is what I found at the doorstep.
Normal life’s been disrupted by the snow, even more than Covid has ruptured our day to day rhythms. I occupied some of my day yesterday by slogging through the snow to bring you these photos.
I seem to have quite a supply of brown birds in my archive, which up until now, I haven’t shared. Here goes:
An obliging robin, seen just too late to turn up on a Christmas card. He’s not entirely brown, but he’s such a superb little chap, that I hope you’ll let him off.
The rest aren’t square. But they are brown, so Jude can have them for her Life in Colour Challenge.
A greylag goose on our village pond.
This week’s mystery guest. Please help.
A parakeet in Málaga
House sparrows in Berlin
A godwit at Slimbridge.
A song thrush in our garden in spring.
A mallard, RSPB Saltholme
A sad little nestling, probably pheasant.
A chaffinch at Scar House Reservoir, Yorkshire
Click on any image to see it in it entirety, full size, and without its being obliterated by captions.
P.S. My mystery bird has now been identified by the wonderful Vogelsnipser, whose blog should be on the list of anyone who enjoys birds. His pictures are fantastic. Here’s what he says: ‘The bird on your photo is a stonechat (saxicola torquatus). males in early-year splendor dress.’
All that snow we’ve been having. It’s so pretty, but I bet those poor sheep were fed up. Look at that featured photo. Not much evidence of grass there. So when I passed a neighbouring farm while out with Virtual Dog on Sunday, I wasn’t too surprised to find any number of sheep gathered round the serving hatch. Nobody needed to encourage them to eat up.
On Friday it snowed. All day. All night, the temperature was -5, and all Saturday it got no higher up than zero. Which was fine, because the snow has been, as it was for King Wenceslas, ‘deep and crisp and even’, and perfect for walking in so long as you were all muffled up, with your best boots on.
This month, Jude has asked us to find photos featuring brown. Well, I know about brown. Here is brown:
That’s right. Mud. We have mud everywhere.
I could cheer things up a bit however. Look at these. My featured photo was taken near Fountains Abbey only a few weeks ago, and here are more uplifting shots of the world in brown. We’ll start off with some that have been squared up – and can anybody help me identify that butterfly please?:
… and move on to a couple more autumnal scenes from Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal; a fish – part of a wall decoration at the Natural History Museum, London; tree bark: and our logs all stacked up for winter. Click on any photo for a close-up.