Vantage point

R and I have had a quiet day today. Both of us are a little anticlimactic after yesterday's Christmas concert, and the weather hasn't helped to pep us up: it was sleeting at 9am, and raining by early afternoon, and it never seemed to get properly light. As it's still cold and we have a lot of lying snow, some of it already compacted, the rain and sleet have produced ice sheets around our garden and much of the village, and walking is extremely hazardous.

I did venture out briefly this morning, doing my icy surface penguin walk, to fill up the feeders and strew some crushed fat balls around for the ground feeding birds. A little later I was back in the kitchen, cooking a lamb dhansak for the freezer, when R called me to see our little pied wagtail, who was using a piece of hazel log I'd left on the patio wall as a vantage point to check for danger, before jumping down onto the wall to eat some of the fat ball crumbs. Even if I felt that I couldn't bear the concept of leaving the house, the knowledge that s/he comes here expecting to find food would be enough motivation to get me out into the garden.

There's another shot of the same bird here, caught in the middle of telling me something.