An icicle drip

After the big freeze last night the day dawned with clear blue sky and a white rime on every surface, even where the snow had melted. Even the black ice seemed to have frost on it. 

I fed the birds and put out some fruit that Helena prepared before she went to work. Again I took pity on the all the birds and scattered seeds, suet, fruit and some oats all over the snowy garden. It soon brought out the pecking order, which seems to be in descending order crows, magpies, squirrels, pigeons, blackbirds, robins, tits and finches with the dunnocks coming in last.

On the hanging feeders there is a different order because many species can't feed directly from them not having the requisite claws to grip the perches or the mesh. There the bullfinches and nuthatches are tied in first place with occasional goldfinches, greenfinches and longtailed tits ruling. They all tend to stay and scoff as much as possible, and only on their departure do the other tits flit back and forth.

I took lots of pictures today as these bright sunny cold icy snowy conditions don't appear too often. I finished up by changing to a macro lens and getting up close to the fence close to our neighbours garden shed. The gutter has no stop on it and rather like the rest of her garden it is a bit decrepit. The slope of the gutter is towards our garden and it normally drips onto our garden which I don't mind as in dry times we need all the water we can get.

Yesterday the snow had melted very slightly and the two inch deep snow in the gutter has slid off the end of the gutter, and then frozen in mid-air. The big freeze then came and icicles have formed which were now just beginning to melt.

I couldn't resist today's Tiny Tuesday Challenge of this midair drip, in fact two drips with a tiny droplet just above it.