Muntjacks and woodpeckers

These are some of the sights from my writing room window. The Muntjack is a persistent visitor and this clearly shows him rootling around trying to find my emerging snowdrops! Actually there are two Muntjacks who visit and we’ll have to do something about the fence (or lack of it) at the end of the garden where they get in, adorable though they are. 

The Great Spotted Woodpecker is also a constant visitor and has fights with the starlings over the fat balls. Often he (or she?) visits with a partner – they never ever feed together even though there’s plenty of room and a choice of three different types of fat on this bird-feeder. One always sits up in the tree above watching whilst the other feeds – they take it in turns, often four or five turns each. The starlings have no such manners – they all pile in together and make a huge racket about it. I do think of the starlings as the chavs of the bird world – and they see my birdfeeder as their local MacDonalds. They also have noisy and very wet disputes in the bird bath.

The squirrel is one of many that frequent our garden. I leave out bread/cake/nuts or whatever (stale mincepies today) every day on a table and I’ve seen five at once visit this to snatch a morsel. But even so, the un-baffled birdfeeder is a constant temptation and here’s one of the little rascals doing his acrobatics to pinch the seed from the poor blue-tits, coal tits and robins. Even if I go outside to shoo them away, some of the more bold squirrels will hold their ground till the very last minute. Our other birdfeeder is protected by a baffle and this works perfectly – no squirrel ever attempts a maraud on this one. The baffle is just a disc of metal placed under the hanging feeders so squirrels can’t shin up the pole, as they do on the unprotected one. Mr B and I are going to try and make our own baffle and see what works.

I’m in bed today with a silly virus thing that completely scuppered all my plans for yesterday and today. But the birds are singing their hearts out in the sunshine outside, and the cats are determined to keep me warm (I’m too hot as it is!) so I’ll just have to sit here in bed and try to work and doze off when I must. At least I finished reading Shadows yesterday so I can now start writing properly. How many days to go now?