Lone Pine Lodge

It's spring and the birds are nesting in my tangled undergrowth, which means I have an unusual number of small birds visiting my feeding station. Especially now that the thrushes and blackbirds have gone back to their usual diet of worms bugs and insects. The visitors have been the usual crowd of sparrows, blue tits and coal tits but yesterday I had two unusual visitors who posed beautifully for me on the seed tray.

I'm putting these up as clickable thumb nails so you can click through and see them BIG as they were take from my back door and the feeder is about 20 feet away.

I was well back in the room when I took the first picture as I didn't want to frighten them off. It's at maximum magnification for my camera.

.

I think the one of the left as you look at the screen is a female. AS i Thought they flew off as I got nearer to the door. One disapeared into the tangle of Ivy on the old coal shed but the other went and sat on the near by fence.



But as I did not open the door, he soon cam back and was joined again by his mate.

.
I'm fairly certain they are bullfinches but they might be chaffinches the RSPB bird finder says they can be mistaken for each other.

I had an other unusual visitor yesterday.

Finlay's people were away overnight and knowing how much he misses company they gave me their backdoor key to go in and sit with him occasionally, especially if he came to me looking as if he was the saddest dog in all the world and his people had deserted him for ever.  The second time I went in to see him (he has a dog door so there was no need to worry about him needing to go out) he decided he would come back with me and he perched himself in my chair  all that mess around me is knitting related except for the coffee cup and wine glass, I like stuff where I can reach it.
It was almost bedtime for me so I went up stairs to change and he followed me I had told my neighbours that he could stay the night if he wanted.  So I went to bed and he had a good sniff round then climbed onto the bed with me. five minutes later his ears pricked up and he was off and downstairs waiting for me to open the back door for him and he dashed off back home.  I think he heard some one at his door and was going to defend his peoples house for them.  Any way I waited up about half an hour then went back to bed.  He greeted me with much tail wagging and bouncing when I weent in to feed him and the cats this morning