It has been remarkable watching the birds in the garden as they rush around to stock up on calories in this cold weather.  Even the blackbirds have ventured really close to the house to take advantage of a bowl of mealworms.

In a heavy wind, the goldfinches hold on for dear life to collect nyjer seeds, but are not to be deterred, as this one individual demonstrates.

I have no idea why these two blue tits tried, tried again and failed to collect peanuts from this feeder!  Fabulous to watch their quick dashing movements.  I love the bit where one of them decides that if the holes won’t work, he’ll drill through the plastic with his beak!  I went and had a look at the feeder, and although I could see nothing wrong I gave it a good shake and matters seemed to resolve themselves after that, and the peanuts began to be extracted in good order.

And this little visitor, not seen before or since, was quite a character.  I had to move the peanut feeder onto an upturned flower pot because it was quite clear that the mouse was going to carry on taking and collecting peanuts until it had enough to see out the winter!  He knew that they were there but couldn’t reach them.  He reverted to the tray of seeds had been put down for the robin, sparrows, dunnock and the blackbird.

The pheasants have no difficulty helping themselves to a bit of everything.  There were seven of them this morning, two males and five females, which is the greatest number I’ve seen in one go.  I feed them twice a day and they are quite happy to help themselves to whatever the other birds are eating, but in spite of their apparent greed, they are big birds and must need quite a lot of food to sustain themselves.