I had two major worries on the first day of my sofa confinement. The first was the risk of a numb backside from sitting down so much. Well I’m up and about on two feet if I need to be so no great problem there. The second was that I would have nothing to write about except birds. Birds! So many and so much to say. How could I have thought for one moment that so great a topic could be of little consequence?

Let me set the scene…

My sofa looks out of the front of the house, facing south across the now almost bare front garden, over the lane, through a field gate and to the tree in the distance. Yes, it’s pretty idyllic. The room we’re sleeping in at the moment is directly above, so has the same view but from a little higher up. The Heptacodium is to the left of the window looking out and the bird table is tucked under it, right in front of the window. This means that for most of the day I’m facing what sunlight there is. Great for the soul, but troublesome for photographing birds, backlit by a low sun.
We woke to another deep, hard frost, but sunshine, blissful glittering sunshine, the field and distant trees glowing a soft pink in the early light. The frost sits prettily on the Heptacodium, forming little white baubles on the seed pod remants tipping each branch.
The shrub ripples all day with the comings and goings of bird life. As the sun slowly melts the frost on the branches, each new arrival sends a fresh rain of drips onto the ground below. The action never stops, except for a few seconds as a car, or a walker with dogs passes by. The morning starts with the house sparrows which nest in the cottage eaves. I love their energetic chattering as they dart past the window down to the table and onto the floor below. They arrive and leave in a muscular gang, scattering in a nattering pack at each fresh interruption.

If you look carefully at this one, you can see the Nuthatch on the front of the bird table and a robin in flight.

The great tits land confidently in the shrub, pecking steadily at bits of bark before dropping for a few select morsels from the table. Bluetits (left) fuss and fidget, stabbing furiously at a tiresome piece of twig as if wresting the life from it before hitting the table for a flurry of pecking and beating a quick retreat into the hedges.

Coal tits fly in unannounced, pick and turn in a second, leaving the scene in a blur of feathers. They’ve been the hardest to capture on camera, but I got one half decent one, on the right of the bird table. The one on the left is a great tit.

One small personal goal for this week was to take a better picture of the nuthatch. This one isn’t bad. As with children, one shouldn’t have favourites, but I love the warm amber of his underbelly, the slate blue of his back and that dashing, dark grey, go-faster stripe along his side. That and the fact that he hangs around long enough for me to photograph him. As you can see, he likes the black sunflower seeds the best. I’m pretty sure there’s only one, but he drops by every ten minutes or so, diving in from the undergrowth on the other side of the lane.

It’s dusk now. All the birds dropped by for a last feeding frenzy, perched high in the branches, catching the last rays of the faint sun as it fell behind the trees. It’s a long time till morning when you only weigh a couple of ounces, you have legs like matchsticks and the temperature is -8C for 14 hours. You need a full belly at bedtime.

The last arrivals were a pair of collared doves. It takes them a few fluttering attempts to get the approach right so that they land inside the table, rather than on top. Once there, they gorge themselves silly before retiring to the telephone wires for a final sunbathe. I don’t mind that they eat so much. They eat what the smaller birds don’t want – the wheat and the millet. Our chickens hoover up whatever the birds spill and the result at the end of each day is an all but bare table.
It wasn’t going to be like this today. I need to do the nursery’s accounts and file them before the end of December. But the sunshine, and the birds and a welcome visit from Dave’s Mum and Dad pushed thoughts of work away. Tomorrow will bring the hard reality of a pile of paperwork and a list of outstanding phone calls. But for today it’s been good to sit still, wait and watch and enjoy the show outside the window.
December 7, 2010