THE BEAST FROM THE EAST MEETS THE STORM FROM THE SOUTH!

Quite a lot of the white stuff has come down over the last few days as the bitterly cold easterly winds met up with a storm surge coming in from the south. As the pictures below show it's going to be a while before we'll be able to get out.

our dog Jack on the only bit of track left below a 6 foot drift notice the rabbit tracks on the drift.

this is the tarmac road leading out to civilisation 

another bad drift on our road

another big drift on our track, lucky the gate was open.

Luckily for the birds I did manage to get some food out to them before the worst of the snow hit. I thought we might have had some more unusual visitors to the feeders because of the weather but the only thing of note was this single male Brambling who was feeding with the many Chaffinches.

male Brambling

Here are some of the other snowy visitors.

male chaffinch

male reed bunting

great tit

robin

female blackbird.

There were lots of pictures on the net of Redwing and Fieldfare, we've got both species up here so I thought I'd cut up the last of our fruit and put it out near my feeders in the hope that they would take the bait. No such luck though I'm afraid as it was quickly gobbled up by the Crows and Magpie's but I suppose they need to feed as well.

Here's a few more pics of some of my garden birds how such tiny creatures survive through these harsh weather conditions is a testament to how tough they must be.

coal tit

goldfinch

nuthatch

Dunnock

Can't see us getting out any time soon and as the thaw sets in it's going to take a ton of rain to shift this lot but at least I've got food and warmth unlike my avian counterparts who'll have to tough it out in these harsh wintry conditions.

Brambling braving the blizzard.

Lets hope the thaw sets in quickly.