Wordless Wednesday

Alford Windmill, Lincolnshire

Winter Aconite, a Change of Diet, Goldfinches in the Snow

The cultivated Winter Aconite corms I bought on eBay arrived a couple of days ago and they were left to soak over night in rain water before being planted in the rockery.



It is a plant I have always wanted so now I am looking forward to my own display of cheerful yellow flowers to welcome the Spring. I hope they will eventually look like the ones in the local church yard.



In a trough in the garden the yellow crocus seem to have appeared out of nowhere.



Yesterday I noticed a couple of birds on feeders where I don't usually see them. These last few days the peanuts seem to have come in to fashion again after being ignored for many weeks. These House Sparrows were pecking away when a small piece of peanut fell out of the feeder. The sparrow on the right deftly caught it and flew off with its prize.



Quite a surprise was to see a Coal Tit on the slab fat feeder. Usually they are just interested in sunflower hearts for eating straight away or black sunflower seeds for taking and storing.



It has been snowing for the last hour so I can see it is going to be another day of keeping warm and watching through the window.



The above was filmed a short while ago. It has now been snowing for three hours. As the snow continued more and more birds arrived to frantically top up from the feeders.

Little and Large

I went through to the kitchen and glanced out of the window to see if there was anything interesting in the back garden. There, feeding on the lawn was a group of birds - the usual - Collared Doves, Pigeons and Chaffinches. In the middle of the group was a Pheasant. The last time I saw a pheasant in the garden was in November last year and I was beginning to think it had ended up as part of some ones Christmas dinner. I dashed through to get the camera and hurriedly took a few hand held shots which, considering the poor lighting conditions, ended up better than I expected.

A lot of the time it was a picture of Little and Large as the Pheasant and a Chaffinch were feeding so close together. Every now and then the breeze would get under the feathers of the Pheasant.





I was hoping to get a shot of the Pheasant taking off but had to make do with this shot of it stretching a wing.



Also visiting were a couple of Long Tailed Tits. I only ever see two together these days. Before the snowy and frosty days there were always six or seven together. I hope the reduced number means that they are a mated pair and not that we lost some in the bad weather.



Yesterday I went to visit a friend and only managed a couple of photo opportunities - one of the five sailed windmill in Alford, Lincolnshire. At least it can be seen while the tree branches are bare. This is a working mill and is open to the public for much of the year.



The other stop was to photo some rain clouds over the Lincolnshire Wolds. Here there are three photos, taken freehand looking through the open car window, which have been stitched together using the demo version of Autostitch. As usual a larger version can be seen on Flickr by clicking on this picture.