Crunching…

Chilled before the sun rose on the pre-breakfast walk for three days now.

Everywhere thoroughly frosted or iced throughout the day and into the night. Gravel crunching.

George’s Pond - iced.

A rat adventured onto the ice of George’s pond.

Blackbirds

Birds scramble for food around the feeders. Blackbirds mauling the over-ripe apples we’ve discarded from the store. Nowhere the Scandinavian redwings and fieldfares we expect at this time of year. No ramblings or lesser redpolls yet either. This year the sunflower hearts in our big feeder are mobbed by goldfinches, greenfinches and chaffinches that are only disturbed by the swaggering great-spotted woodpecker - or an attention-seeking pole-dancing blackbird..

A wood pigeon a bulky galleon among the dainty dunnocks, robins, great tits and blue tits racing for food beneath the bare magnolia.

Frosted teasel seedheads

Previously busy seedheads stay impenetrable to bills under their coat of frost.

The stumpery ferns have been flattened by the cold and the bird baths are solid.

A wren forages in our bulky dead hedges. They are a warm refuge even on these cold days.

A dead hedge made from twigs, branches, pruning and hay is like a linear compost heap and provides refuge for invertebrates, small mammals, and slow worms..

From the kitchen I count the birds as I warm-up for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend.