Noisy

Day 5199 of The Cold, which I'm now beginning to think might outlive me.

But am I downhearted? Well, maybe just a bit.

Still, it was a sunny day, which is always nice, especially in January. I didn't feel up to doing much, but when I vaguely mentioned Hillers to R over breakfast, he promptly said that if I wanted to go he'd be happy to join me, and that sealed the deal. By "join me" he didn't, of course, mean that he'd sit in the bird hide - togetherness only goes so far - but he took some stuff to read and lounged around the café for the twenty five minutes I managed to tolerate the temperature in the hide, before joining him for reviving coffee and cake.

By the way, if you're thinking - as well you might - that I'm not doing myself any favours by going out in minus temperatures when I'm ill, the strange thing is that I tend to feel worse when I'm sitting at my desk in my warm study, and better when I'm out in the fresh air. That said, it was very fresh today (-6 down in our little valley, and -3 up at Hillers), so I didn't hang about.

As I walked through the show garden the competing bird song all around me was almost cacophonous. Loudest of all was this little robin, who was trying to drown out an entire charm of goldfinches who were chattily stripping a nearby tree of seeds. I'm probably imagining that s/he is glaring in their direction, but the angle of gape and the thrust of the tiny tongue definitely speak of yelling going on.

My second photo today is of the resident grey wagtail, mincing gingerly across the ice on the pond outside the bird hide. The pond is quite shabby these days, and badly in need of cleaning out, so I usually avoid having it in my photos, but I'm always pleased to get a shot of a grey wagtail, and the ice serves as a reminder of today's temperature. When we got home I carefully defrosted the bird bath in our garden, only to see it freeze again well before nightfall.