Raider

It was a dull and murky morning, and when R suggested coffee at Hillers I jumped at the chance to get out of the valley. It's possible that I may have eaten an industrial quantity of cake as well, which probably wasn't the best idea given how sedentary I was for most of the day. Bathroom scales best avoided tomorrow, I think.

Leaving R in the café I went off to the bird hide for a timed half hour. I'm always amused by the number of people who stomp into the hide, stick their heads out of the window, agree with each other that there's nothing around, and then leave again; I just sit in my corner, keep my opinions to myself, and wait for the birds to get over the disruption and return to the feeding stations. To be fair, it was quieter today than it would be in cold weather - but this is a good thing: the birds are obviously still finding their own wild food, and not having to rely too heavily on the stuff put out by Hillers.

Most of my shots today were of blue tits, which as usual posed obligingly on the back of the bird table, though I did also capture a handsome male chaffinch, just coming into his new plumage. But the prize I wanted - simply because of the challenge they present - was one of the two nuthatches that were zooming in and out, sometimes seeming to grab food without even properly landing. In fact they were so fast that I only realised there were two different birds raiding the table when one arrived as the other was leaving. Out of many frames - most of which contained either a blur of nuthatch or no nuthatch at all - this is my one sharp image. But one is all you need, and I'm happy with it.

Male and female nuthatches look similar, but the females are slightly duller in colouring, and I think that this is a male. He has a black rather than a brown eye stripe (which I always think of as a highwayman's mask), and though you can't see it well here his flanks are a deep orangey red. Nuthatches prefer to eat live invertebrate prey, but during the cold months they supplement this with seeds and nuts. In times of plenty they will cache some of their food, hiding it in bark crevices and even covering it with moss or lichen, and then retrieving it in colder weather when food is scarce.