Thursday 26 February 2009
Bumblee and Goldcrest
Later in the morning I noticed a goldcrest in the tree that overhangs our back garden. This is the first time I have seen this tiny song bird in our garden (but I did get a close encounter in the local park - see earlier entry).
When the sun came out I watched a queen bumble bee investigating the holes between the bricks in a low brick wall. Probably looking for a nest site.
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Frog courtship
As it got dark, the frog chorus started up and continued all evening. When I went outside to put the rubbish out (at about 10.00pm) I noticed that the sky looked rather spooky right out of a horror film.
It wasn't foggy so I can only assume that it was the lights from the sports stadium reflecting off the underside of very low cloud. It did look very odd.
Sunday 22 February 2009
First spawn in the pond
Thursday 19 February 2009
First frog of the year
Wednesday 4 February 2009
Longtailed tits, Gold crest and Redwing
Monday 2 February 2009
Snow, snow, snow!
View of our back garden.
As my daughter was out sledging with friends I took a walk around the Old Village (Portslade). The following are a few of the pictures I took
My favourite view of the Old Village, coming in from the west. It looks even more beautiful covered in snow - a possible contender for my home made Christmas cards next year.
A beautiful robin, singing from a bush, another Christmas card contender.
A small feeding flock of goldfinchesI walked along to Easthill Park to see what birds were around. Compared to the snowy days last year, there were very few birds around.
The blackbirds were the most active, scattering the snow so they could root around in the leaf litter.And a few blue tits (above) great tits and a chaffinch. A flock of what looked like fieldfare flew over but did not settle.
The snow created some amazing patterns on the branches of trees.
I am not sure if the ponies in the adjacent horse rescue centre appreciated the snow as much as the children.
A family were building an igloo. They had a plastic container which they used to compact snow into bricks and then used them to construct the above. Unfortunately I did not see the outcome and it they managed to get the roof to stay on.
To my surprise, our cat (which was a house cat and never been outside before we had her a coupe of years ago) was quite happy to brave the snow.