The early morning light over Montserrat

I woke rather too early this morning and not wanting to disturb Helena, I got up and had tea downstairs looking out at the garden. It was very cold last night, but any frost had melted, although the sun's rays hadn't reached the back garden which faces south-west. The light was beautiful at first and as I sat sipping tea I couldn't resist picking up my camera yet again. When a nuthatch arrived to eat the sunflowers we offer in the feeder outside the door, I decided to brave the cold and slid the rear door open so that i didn't have to take pictures through the double-glazing.

A lot of birds arrived there including blackcaps, goldfinches, robins, bullfinches, blue tits, great tits, longtailed tits and even a very rare (for us) greenfinch. The pair of blackbirds d=sang and hopped about the garden but don't come near the feeders as they can't perch like the other birds. The nuthatches also landed on the cabin roof and ran along its edge from one end to the other and then stopped before running vertically down the roof to another feeder.

I also spotted that one of the squirrels was in the ash tree at the bottom of the garden, which I described in blip a couple of days ago. I showed a picture of the hole made by the green woodpecker for its nest last year. I didn't mention that the year before another similar hole had been made a couple of feet higher up and on the eastern side, in some rotten wood where a major part of the trunk of the ash tree had broken off. Today i saw the squirrel poke its head inside the upper hole before disappearing inside it. Then it poked its nose out of the hole and stayed there for at least five minutes.

I walked to the cabin and to get closer and took some pictures of the squirrel's head poking out, and while I did so another squirrel came into the garden and sat on the edge of the raised bed when it saw me looking at it with a camera. It didn't stay long.
I have added these pictures and some others to my Flickr gallery which I posted yesterday.

But I have blipped a picture from earlier in the day before the weather changed and clouded over (a major hail shower has just finished). It shows the light from the sun as it begins to rise over the hilltops, shining on the north facing slopes of the Golden Valley opposite us at a small coombe called Montserrat. I think it might appeal to Ellaphant :o)