Watching and feeding birds

It started snowing this morning around 9.30-10.00am, and then snowed most of the day. It was only very fine snow (not large flakes), but managed to build up throughout the day. Other areas of the country got a lot more snow, and I think even around us the hills got more snow (we are in a valley). But we must have had at least a couple of inches worth.

In the morning I wrote an article for my photo tips website. Unfortunately I still need to take some photos to illustrate it, so it is only really half finished.

In the afternoon we ran out of bird food, so I went down to the shops in the snow. Mealworms are really expensive, £2.50 for 100g - i.e. £25/kg. When I got back I gave some more food to the birds, and they ate it pretty quickly.

We have lots of blackbirds, sparrows, and starlings. The blackbirds are almost constantly in the garden, while the sparrows and starlings alternate between the garden, the hedge, and next door's garden. Wood pigeons and collared doves visit a few times a day. Today we saw two redwings as well.

I mixed up the different bird foods I'd bought then put some out for them, but they didn't seem very interested after that. So I brought the saucers back inside to avoid them becoming covered with snow. I'm sure they'll be happy to have them out again for breakfast tomorrow.

Different bird foods

Put bits of different ones into a tub

Mix around and it's like a posh birdfood, but cheaper

The mixed birdfood is popular with all the birds. It has mealworms and sultanas in for blackbirds and other fruit / meat eaters, and seeds for sparrows and other seed eaters. I think the pigeons and collared doves probably eat anything.

In the evening I watched an hour of Mahabarat. The king of Indraprast (can't remember what his name is) was a total maniac and gambled everything away even when it was obvious that he would loose. Then the king of Hastinapur gave it all back to him. Indiantastic.

For the rest of the evening I did a little bit of work on the CTH website, and some more debugging of why wp_cron wasn't working on one of my wordpress sites. I also watched Ray Mears' Wild Britain.