An interlude for New Year

Now this has nothing to do with horses whatsoever - but that's fine now and again, of course, so bear with me :-)

It seems to be a very British thing to feed the wild birds in your garden.   My Grannie had a bird table in the garden opposite the kitchen window in her cottage and, as far back as I can remember, us having our breakfast at her kitchen table included watching the birds outside have their breakfast, which my brother and I had (at the age of 5 or so) ineptly but lovingly prepared from stale loaves and other scraps and then placed on the bird table. 

On Exmoor, we have cold winters anyway so feeders and bird tables are ever-popular and I became jealous of the crowds of wild birds I saw in the gardens of friends and neighbours - Edward, Catherine and Victoria at Kipscombe and Tony and Jill at Balewater in particular spurred me on in attempting to emulate them in my haphazard way(!)

So, after being given a bird feeder back in February (thank you Tony!) I put it up and after a few false starts by December (yes, I am a slow learner) I seemed to have found the right place for it...

One of the joys of the mad amounts of snow and ice we have had since November has been the vast numbers of wild birds we have seen all day from the kitchen window.  If any of you don't already indulge, I would highly recommend you invest in a few bird feeders for 2011 - its endlessly entertaining and rewarding, and you never know quite what you will see out from the kitchen - it beats the telly hands down, I can promise!

So for New Year's Day, to amuse those of you who don't already feed the birds and to prove to my Mum and Dad that it is possible to see masses of them even from your sofa, here is the footage I took just before Christmas from the kitchen window:-)


Birds from Nic Barker on Vimeo.