7th January

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

"Shook the snow from the evergreens, and shovelled the walks." Gilbert White, 1785 (Hampshire)

"5.40pm... A sublime sort of evening - windy, vast, with wild clouds and great spreads of mournful light where the sun had been, clearing away for a while into a starry purple dome, with the Pleiades and Orion and the Great Bear and the Galaxy, a sight than makes man feel his immortality and his littleness more than perhaps any other... Across the pale amber two or three dark, almost back, little clouds drove slanting like collapsed balloons. Against this western screen the trees showed their leafless fringes, and a bend of the New River lay gloomy and blue beneath them." James Smetham, 1861 (Middlesex)


Another grey day! No snow, no freeze - though it rained when I was halfway along the road to town in the evening... I'm told that people are skating across rivers further to the East, but not around here they're not... *sighs*
Byslantedlight, 2009 (Cambs.)

I didn't forget yesterday, but lj was down when I tried to post... *headdesk*

8th January

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

"Bushes and short trees blown like the flame of a candle. Long-tailed tits on dead stems of willow herb 4ft. high. Rushes, half dead, half green.

"Never go for a walk in the fields without seeing one thing at least however small to give me hope, the frond of a fern among dead leaves." Richard Jeffries, 1884 (Sussex)


Yet another grey day, and misty in the distance...


...winter skies...


...frozen fens...


...and not a long-tailed tit, but a robin redbreast on dead stems!


A winter land of mist and skies...
Byslantedlight, 2009 (Cambs.)

Birdies!

[rosie55.livejournal.com]

Following on from discussions and piccies between caffyolay , londonronnie and byslantedlight ,, and since old technodope here can never get piccies to show up in her comments, here is a piccie of long-tailed tits which I took in our back garden on 22 July last year - ie a week after I broke my ankle when I was still housebound. So this was taken through the window, excuse the quality. Excuses, excuses!
And, erm, they're regular visitors to our birdtable, along with great and blue tits, I will try and get some better shots because all the birds are feeding like mad in this cold weather and I have a camera with a better zoom! (Now I'll never see one again, will I?)
And this morning, to my great delight, there was a song thrush pootling around too - we very rarely see those now! Here it is - in amongst all the bare twigs, you see! Beautiful, isn't it? he? she?