Chaffinch In The Snow

I know my mate Nigel doesn't like the word luck when it comes to photography, but this blip was about as jammy as you can get!

The forecast snowapocolypse duly arrived over night. My god it must have come down hard! There was nothing when we went to bed, and by five am when I had a look out, it was white. There has been at least six inches fallen. Blip is awash with snow photos today as you can imagine.

When I came down to make a cup of tea the garden had a couple of Blackbirds and a Dunnock all scraping around in the snow for bird food. They were clearly desperate. I was still in my dressing gown, so there was no way I was going out there, so I had a look at what I could do. I managed to find an old container I used over in Llantwit Fardre, and chucked a couple of handfuls of bird food in there, and put it outside the patio doors. Within a minute the female Blackbird flew straight onto the container. I reckon if I had left the door open she would have joined me in the kitchen for a bit of a warm!

We had three Blackbirds in the end and I got a few lovely shots of them!

Tonyrefail Blackbird In The Snow #1

Tonyrefail Blackbird In The Snow #2

Tonyrefail Blackbird In The Snow #3

And then something flew straight in and onto the rose bush right outside the patio door. A stunning male Chaffinch! Another garden tick for here. It sat there long enough for me to get three decent shots off him before he flew back off in the direction of the woods. Utter luck, as I have not seen one here until now.

Proof that "feed them and they will come" works!

Nag time again! The weather is set to get much much colder for the next week. The birds will suddenly struggle, if you can put some food out, and fresh water. If you have no bird food in the house, apples, raisins, grapes, crumbled digestive biscuits, baked potatoes or roasted potatoes (not boiled in salt and cooked in purified fat) can all help. Bread is okay, but please only put small amounts out. Bread is the bird equivalent of a stick of celery to us, it uses more energy to eat than provides.

I didn't venture far today, we have too much work to do. I took a few photographs of Mill Street which I have added to a new Flickr group I have set up to put all my Tonyrefail photos in. Feel free to have a look.