It's for the birds...

Since the old cat's been gone, it's amazing how many birdies have braved our garden again. Henry was an awesome predator, and for years I've never dared to encourage feathered friends with food because entering our garden was dicing with certain death - he really was quite wild in that way. More than once, I've seen him take a bird out of the air right in front of my face... and once he'd caught something, nothing would make him give up his prey. I've wept and wailed at him, chased him and chastised him, but Carlo has always been philosophical about it.... "he's a cat" he'd say... "it's his nature..." And yeah I guess it was.

But anyway, now he's gone the birds have come back. And so we set up a bird table and bird bath, and I've really enjoyed watching the dickies flocking round for food. Carlos calls me and tells me I have customers waiting, and sure enough they're all out there hanging around for treats!

Of course, the sodding squirrels are a terrible nuisance round here, and steal as much of the food as they can but I know there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm getting resigned. I still hate them with a passion, but I realise they're not going anywhere, anytime soon... so I'll just have to learn to ignore them as best I can.

But take a look at that feeder - all busted up by squirrels trying to get in to steal the fat ball...!! Grr!




I know this picture's terrible and my one regret is that I haven't managed to get a decent picture of any bird yet, but one of my mates has convinced me to get my old fuji S5500 out of the wardrobe, and give it another go. It's got a fab zoom on it, so if I can just learn to sit very still... and have some patience, I might get some good snaps yet! :-)