Today’s picture is of a chaffinch.
The day started badly with the outlet pipes from both the bath and the handbasin in the B&B bathroom frozen solid. It just goes to show how easy it is too overlook a minute drip from a tap in the normal course of things. On the top of this, the boiler was off and the house temperature was down to 12º. The boiler was easy to cure thankfully. A quick tap on the reset button put things to rights. It doesn’t fill you with confidence though.
The pipes were more of a chore. After an hour of pouring boiling water on the pipes outside and directing heat at the pipes inside, the bath began to flow. It was only after another hour of the same that the basin gave a gurgle and this was after I had left the house to go to a meeting so the success was down to well aimed heat applied from inside the house by Mrs Tootlepedal. This is the third time we have had to do this so we hope that keeping the plugs in really tightly will save us having to do it again.
The meeting I went to was with John Hills. We were doing some editing on the booklet for the Heritage Trail and we made good progress although there is still some work to be done. While I was returning home after the meeting, I passed a pied wagtail popping about on the pavement in Henry Street. John Ritchie told me later on that it is almost a pet bird and quite unafraid of shopkeepers.
I had time to take a fleeting photo or two of the bird feeders which are pretty busy as you would expect in this sub zero weather.
and another..
After lunch, Ian Ritchie came round and we did some recording for the Heritage DVD to go with the booklet. He was very helpful and we got quite a lot of what should turn out to be useful material. His voice records well which makes it fairly straightforward to edit.
Ian was a moment or two late in coming and I took the opportunity to snatch a rather fuzzy brambling in the afternoon sunlight.
As you can see, he (she) is on the new feeder and the bramblings certainly seem best adapted of our regular visitors to using it comfortably. The starlings occasionally give it a go but they have to flap their wings so vigorously to stay on it that they must use more calories than they can consume.
When Ian had gone, I took a wheelbarrow round to John’s shop to pick up a sack of potatoes which he had kindly ordered for us. When all the transport grinds to a halt, we will still have leeks in the garden and potatoes in the sack so we should be good for leek and potato soup to live on for a week or two. After that I went round to Bob and Nancy’s to pick up my stylish red gnomelike hat which I had managed to leave behind at their do yesterday.
I would have gone slot car racing in the evening but it was agreed that it was too cold to spend time freezing to death in the Bowling Club’s unheated pavilion.
Oh, I see that I have another bird picture…
and one last one..
I note that my recorder playing friend, Sue is reading the blog while she is on holiday in Canada and since we had a comment from someone in Michigan two days ago, our reach is now worldwide (almost).
Tootlepedal's Blog 
So sorry about your pipes, what a terrible bore and hours of work. We will have to be very careful when we come.
Lovely birds as usual, I added 3 to my collection.
Hope you have no more frozen pipes. Loved the three sparrows having a conversation. Was interested to see in the paper I was doing yesterday at Archive that Langholm New Town Bowling Club was asking the Police Commissioners if it could get water from the town supply and they did! I also wondered how they dealt with frozen pipes in these days.