Winter robin

I've blipped a robin before, in the summer in my Dad's back garden. This one was at Leighton Moss, it has to be admitted a very approachable bird, with a ring on its right leg. He was fluffed up almost into a ball, presumably to provide a little more insulation in the bitterly cold temperatures.

We were at the Moss to show Eduardo and Katya the starlings coming into roost. As last week, they came in flocks of several thousand at a time and plunged almost vertically into the reedbed roost. A great spectacle as always, but not the big wheeling murmurations we were hoping for. There was nothing to add to the blip of a few days ago.

Today proved that yesterday's first outing with the new telephoto lens was a bit of a fluke. I have hundreds of distinctly below average blurry pictures of gulls, goosanders, crows, goldeneyes and carrion crows in flight. The lens also distracted me from the landscape dusted with the first snow we have had this year. Katya and I went out to watch the sun rise, and we both have lots of very average snowy landscapes with a pinkish sky.

Nothing was really working today, until the little robin presented himself. So it's a robin blip, taken with the original lens.

Thank you to everyone who viewed, commented and rated yesterday's blip of the flying swans. It made it onto the Spotlight and Rated pages.