A Berry Happy New Year

Amazingly, it had actually stopped raining when I woke up this morning (though I gather that other parts of the country further North have had some testing conditions).  I took advantage of the local dry weather to go for a short walk. Its the first time I've been out for a walk since Christmas Eve, so I took it slowly and pottered around some local lanes with the camera.  

We seem to have become magpie central whilst I've been confined indoors.  I saw a group of 16 early on (I counted them 3 times as I couldn't quite believe it), and continued to add to my magpie total as I walked.  Now its perfectly feasible that they were following me around, keeping low behind hedges etc, although I didn't see them at it, but I gave up counting when I reached 50.   Undoubtedly some were double counted, but even so that's a "pie-full" of magpies if ever there was one.

I did take some shots of magpies and jackdaws in flight which I rather like, but the very plain dull grey sky makes for a rather boring image, so I have instead gone for this shot of a female blackbird eating ivy berries.  As you can see from the settings, it was quite dark...

Having got back from my walk, and eaten some lunch with Cathy, a snooze was most definitely needed, and I shan't be moving far from the chair for the rest of the day now.  It's most definitely a question of just taking one day at a time at the moment.