Keeping my pecker up ...

After cleaning and restocking the feeders the other day we have been besieged by the local avian population.  (Possibly a slight over exageration, but only a slight one).  Today started with a pied woodpecker clamping itself to the sunflower hearts dispenser and doing its best to grab sun flower hearts from an opening designed for much smaller birds.  Interestingly it doesn't seem to have applied any significant force to the dispenser, and as it didn't actively shake the feeder, most of the contents remained inside.

Later in the day a pair of crows took up residence.  They seem to have worked out that if they can give the sunflower heart feeder a rough shake there will then be hearts to hoover up on the ground below.  Not a good sign, as the large feeder is now half empty and I only filled it yesterday.  To some extent the finches robins and tits have helped, but a lot of the damage is down to those crows.  The chaffinches gave up the battle for the bounty and went and sat in the nearby trees until the crows had cleared off.

The other visitor was the green woodpecker shown in this shot.  She spent some time digging up the lawn before settling on this small cherry tree.  I think she was probably in the garden for as long as an hour.  I was in the kitchen baking bread and making Christmas puddings and certainly every time I looked up she was busy in the garden.