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:
The rest aren’t square. But they are brown, so Jude can have them for her Life in Colour Challenge.
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.
We were just strolling up one of Málaga’s neighbourhood shopping streets, when we saw this:
What’s up here?
Murder most foul?
Someone up to no good?
The aftermath of an uprising?
How upsetting.
Luckily we soon realised.
These up-ended legs belonged to a plaster mannequin.
The shop where they’d come from was having a makeover.
It was going up-market.
Selling to those Uptown Girls.
This time last year we were in Málaga. Would you like to have a look at the town centre? Here you are.
This image is a bit up-and-down-and-all-over-the-place. That’s because it’s a reflection in a delivery van’s window.
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.
These daffodils appear days after Christmas.
Just beside the village pond.
This year and every single year.
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.
