Bird Breakfast Blizzard

Big wet flakes swirl all around me as I carefully carry the breakfast tray across the garden.  It’s hard to find a snow-free spot to scatter left-over mince pies, chopped apple, sultanas and seed.  'Blackie's beady eyes watch me from beneath the buddleia, the flash of his yellow beak provides the only colour today.  A whiff of summer from the apple is carried away in a blizzardy gust.  I sprinkle bird-breakfast and scurry back in doors.

Five more blackbirds arrive and I’m glad I chopped the apple up small. Siskins, goldfinches, chaffinches, dunnocks, sparrows, starlings, a song thrush, coal-tits, blue-tits, great-tits, all jostle for space.  Even birds that don’t normally hang onto seed feeders are having a go, a starling tries, a dunnock too, and then a robin flutters his wings wildly as he tries to grab on to the swinging seed.

Goldfinches!  You'd think to look at them that butter wouldn't melt, yet they are so narky and quarrelsome and the shrill, grating sound they make is not at all what you'd expect from such a glamorous looking bird. 

Another bird came to visit my garden last week. 

I Googled her and discovered she was a Reeve's pheasant. 

Her markings were so beautiful.  She clattered down from the fence and ran towards me.  I gave her seed from the large sack in my shed.  She stayed all afternoon, admiring herself in the glass of the patio doors, then left.  I heard shooting from the estate nearby and hoped she hadn't headed that way.