MERRY CHRISTMAS

To all of you who have been kind enough to look at my blog

                   MERRY CHRISTMAS

FROSTY MORNING

Yesterday morning we woke to a hard frost, my feeders are well stocked up except for the one with the squirrel hole in thats empty dont they realise I'm on a budget! Anyway got some nice wintery pic's of my local birds. No dunnock though or siskin sure I had them at my feeders this time last year anyway enough of me typing nonesense lets have a look at the birds.

       female reed bunting

      male chaffinch

     we had to have a jay

      male blackbird

      female greenfinch

      coal tit

      a christmas robin

        female chaffinch

         male brambling     

     mixed group of finches, work out what they are?

       female brambling

    male brambling, I kinda like this pic shows the beauty of the bird.

    not happy with busting my peanut feeder think it's going to have a go at recking this one.

LATEST BIRD PIC'S

I've done my bleeding back in (again) so in my boredom of sitting around all day in pain and going insane thought I'd edit some images hope you like them.

             goldfinch

       female reed bunting

        greenfinch

         nuthatch

        great spotted woodpecker

    male  chaffinch

       male brambling

      robin

          great tit

                  jay

The bramblings are back after a few weeks absence just a male to start with but there was both male and female at feeders today. Took some frosty photo's today so hopefully will edit some soon.

CLEVER JAYS

I was wondering why my one peanut feeder was emptying a lot faster than the others, I think a squirrel must have bit some of the mesh at the bottom of the feeder to make a large gap so the nuts fall out at a rate of knots like a free vending machine.

The Jays have now found this large hole in the feeder and are now able to empty about 6 to 10 peanuts at one go.

Iv'e had up to six Jay's all waiting for one to peck a few peanuts out then they all scrum after the food.


There's also been a few Reed Bunting coming into the feeders lately, I managed to get a few pic's of this stunning male.

Here's the best of the rest.

POISONED

Went to put some food in the feeders last Sunday when I came across a fox lying in the grass, when it saw me it got up walked three yards and collapsed. The poor thing looked like it had been poisoned, there were no marks or wounds on it to suggest it had been in a fight with another animal or had been shot. Within an hour it had died.

I've got two things about this killing that I'm not comfortable with, we've got a nine year old boy who's very inquisitive what if he had saw the fox first tried to help it and the poison from the fox was transferred to him also what if our dog Jack had got to it and licked it or bit it and the poison been transferred to him? I believe the use of poisons to be illegal I understand that foxes could take newly born lambs and chickens etc. but surely there's got to be a more humane and safer way to keeping foxes under control.
We have the hunt up around here during the autumn and winter months but not happy with killing the foxes using dogs and men in full camo gear with guns and the rest of it people want to put poison down, imagine the other wildlife that feed on carrion (dead animals) that would have been killed if I would have left the foxes carcass instead of burning it which was the only sure way to make sure no other creature would have suffered the same fate as this poor animal.

    This is how close he was to our house.

I'd rather see foxes like the images below which I took a couple of months ago, for all their wrong doings they truly are a beautiful animal and don't deserve to be cruely murdered in this way.