Visitor

The weather is slowly warming up here, its been above freeing for most of the day, and the snow is melting.  Its a shame in some ways, but definitely an improvement in others.  

I popped out to our local supermarket to get some milk and vegetables in the car earlier.  The supermarket had shut their car park and had members of staff busy trying to clear away the snow.  I suspect that they had been told that if anyone slipped and fell on the ice they could be held liable.  In the event, there was an enormous car parking problem on the roads around the supermarket, with shoppers teetering along on the icy pavements with their full bags of shopping between the store and their parked cars.  I saw one poor chap step off a kerb onto what he thought was slushy snow only to go more than boot deep into melt water which had a scum of slush on its top.  Poor chap, I really felt for him, but made sure I avoided that particular pitfall.

In the meantime the birds have been visiting the garden.  In addition to the usual finches, tits, robins and blackbirds, we also had this solitary Fieldfare, which kindly kept still long enough on the yew for me to grab this shot.  Normally we see them in flocks in the fields, so its quite unusual to have this single visitor, but I couldn't spot any others nearby.

Its the anniversary of my sister's kidney transplant today - "kidney day".  Whilst I was on the phone to her, Cathy tells me that a sparrow hawk came and sat on the garden fence for a moment.  Needless to say, its not been back, although I've been keeping an eye out just in case.