Garden feast!

We've had a waxwing on this Rowan today which was very exciting as I've never seen one `live' before. The tree, however, belongs to a pair of mistle thrushes, who defend it vigorously from all comers, so the waxwing was quickly chased off. Last year we had a solitary blackcap (who really should have migrated south) trying to feed on the berries and the mistle thrushes agressively chased him off too - even though they'd eaten all the berries within their reach. How this blackbird managed to have a five minute feast I'm really not sure. Perhaps blackbirds are higher up the pecking order than thrushes!

I see all of these wonderful garden bird on Blipfoto and feel that I'd really like to capture some better bird shots myself (the light was against me when I took the blackbird). I've had some advice about setting up a garden perching/ feeding station from After the rain but I also need some advice on telephoto lenses. At the moment my Canon and Pansonic lenses are only 200mm which doesn't give me quite enough magnification. I think I need to ask for advice on the forum.

Apart from the birds it's been a day for evicting spiders - they are very fine spiders with long legs. We had a nursery at the end of the summer and now they have their lines of fine silken thread everywhere. At least one has gone out into the garden but maybe they are a bit like snails and re-home.