Breakfast for the birds

I didn't meant to take these pictures but as soon as I saw a Greater spotted woodpecker feeding on the peanuts I was tempted.  They do visit us quite regularly but I haven't managed to get a close up picture of one this year.  I had just returned from driving Helena to work and hadn't even had a proper cup of coffee, but I went to get my camera from upstairs and then slid open the rear door without disturbing it.  Because the light was so poor with thick grey clouds still hanging low in the sky after the rain, the pictures were still not as I'd hoped.

I noticed there were lots of birds going to the various feeders and that they needed replenishing.  I went to buy new supplies of sunflowers seeds yesterday so I filled up where appropriate and stocked up the peanut feeders with fresh nuts.  I also threw some seed on the ground for the browsers as I realised that the poor weather seemed to have affected the food supplies locally.  I think all the young fledged birds have got used to us providing food.

I then made my usual brew of fresh coffee and went to sit looking out of the open window of the cabin just a few yards away from these feeders hanging from the rhus tree.  The foliage is now very thick so the light was very poor under the canopy which didn't bode well keeping the ISO down.

Within a minute the birds flew in large numbers.  Various tits, goldfinches, bullfinches, robins, blackbirds and even lovely shy dunnocks.  The woodpecker didn't return until I had gone and the green woodpecker I spotted in the garden yesterday (a rather rare visitor these days) stayed away.

This female blackbird amused me and brooked no argument from the other birds landing straight in the tray feeder.  I liked this picture of it tossing the suet pellet in the air and with its tongue just visible.  The next continuous image showed no pellet at all, it having gone straight down its throat.  The male blackbird did the same.

I have added two other pictures of the birds feeding, one featuring a nuthatch on the tray and bullfinch on the sunflower feeder.  The other picture shows a tit unusually hanging around on the feeder, whilst the bullfinch on the other side is dropping a lot of its chewed up seed from its beak, which is quite a common sight.  That is why the dunnock likes to feed on the ground directly beneath when the squirrel or cats aren't hanging around.