Bird-o-Rama

I barely got off the couch yesterday. The weather was dismal. I managed to walk to the cleaners to pick up one of Dave's shirts, and I got Olga a new bag of dog food, but otherwise it was a day to stay home.

Fortunately, we had plenty of avian entertainment during a late-morning break in the rain. The European goldfinches were back, snacking on the seeds of our dry teasels.

(And by the way, remember how I found tiny teasel seedlings growing in the seedheads at Wormwood Scrubs? We have the same phenomenon in our own garden. You can barely see them in the photo above. I might try to extract one or two of them to pot and grow next season.)

The omnipresent starlings were squabbling noisily and making splashy visits to the birdbath.

This parakeet tried valiantly to get into the peanut feeder, even peeling back some of the duct tape that holds on the lid. It didn't succeed, though. I tried to set out a plate of peanuts for it, but that spooked it and it flew off.

This little coal tit, however, was perfectly happy with our peanut feeder -- as are the blue tits and other little garden birds.

This great spotted woodpecker visited our suet feeder. Quite an impressive bird.

A starling kept watch while the woodpecker ate. The starlings love the suet and are very protective of it!