Today’s guest picture was sent to me by our daughter Annie. She has been in warm foreign parts lately where she encountered this bird. It is definitely not a chaffinch.
By contrast, it was freezing here when we got up this morning. Although it warmed up a little, it never got very warm, and it started to rain just as Dropscone came round for coffee. It didn’t stop for the rest of the useful day.
Mrs Tootlepedal’s tulips survived the frost, but were not looking particularly happy when I checked on them.
It didn’t rain very hard until the very moment when I thought that I might go for a wet walk. At that moment, it rained just hard enough for just long enough to persuade me to stay indoors. Then it went back to being a miserable drizzle again.
It was suitable weather for watching the birds, which I did on and off through the morning.
It was very good to see Dropscone, who was fit enough not only to walk round for coffee, but to carry four of his excellent treacle scones with him. He is much cheerier than he was when I last saw him in his hospital ward. He has realised that he was probably feeling a bit under the weather for quite a bit before he was officially declared ill, so he is optimistic that he will make good progress now.
When he left, I had another look at the birds, and was pleased to spot a redpoll among the chaffinches.
Then I settled down to put a couple of weeks of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database either side of lunch, having abandoned hopes for my walk.
I organised some music for our recorder group, and cooked a beef stew by traditional methods for our evening meal.
After our evening meal, my recorder playing friend Susan, who is also Dropscone’s daughter, very kindly arrived to drive me to our recorder group meeting, and we had a most enjoyable time playing early music at Sue’s house near Brampton.
Although we are going to have a couple of chilly nights, it looks as though we might be in for a week of better weather from Sunday onwards. Mrs Tootlepedal will hope that this gives the garden a chance to dry out and warm up the soil a bit. It has not been good gardening weather lately, and she is feeling deprived. Some lighter winds would make me very happy too.
The flying bird of the day is a chaffinch.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
I used very occasionally to see hoopoes when I lived in France, and was always thrilled to do so. I read that very occasionally they are seen in southern England, though they don’t breed here. Such a treat for Annie, wherever she saw hers.
She was basking on a Spanish island.
Those are nice shots of the birds on such a gloomy day. I had a turn at that last week and found out how difficult it was.
The tulips are colorful. I saw some with those colors but the shape was different.
That’s a strange looking bird your daughter saw. I wonder how many comic strips they inspired.
I take a lot of bird pictures to be able to select a few for the posts.
Wonderful bird photos! They are inspirational, I have to set up my long lens to try and capture some bird portraits. May the sun shine for you soon!
I have the feeder right outside our window so it is not hard to capture the birds. I still need a good zoom though. I hope that you are successful with your long lens.
It’s surprising, but I actually knew the foreign bird, a Hoopoe bird, except that I remembered the name as “Hoopee” – close enough for Google help me check my memory. I read a book once where one of the characters was nicknamed after this bird. I wonder where your daughter was when she took the picture.
Tenerife on holiday.
The birds have all been hiding here as we are enduring a 3 day spring blizzard! Nice pops of colour in your bird photos in what has been a white day here.
We are hoping that we have seen the back of winter now but there is always time for some late frosts to spoil the garden.
We’ve got another month where frost is an option
It was -2C this morning but it doesn’t seem that much great damage was done.
What fun to see a hoopoe in this post! A pair of them visit our garden every now and then, especially when the ground has been softened by the rain. It is good to know about Dropscone’s recovery too.
We don’t get many hoopoes in our garden to say the least. 🙂
Some good bird portraits here
Thank you.
Good to hear that Dropscone is feeling better, and that you had some enjoyable tootling even if no pedalling.
It looks like winter starts again… In some places here, temperatures can go negative during the nights. Combined with a lot of rain in the coming days, hikes or bike-rides are no part of the planning 🙂
We are in for a dry week so a lot of pedalling is on the menu.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a hoopoe, but those are excellent chaffinches, and I suspect that they are considerably less flighty than the exotic beauty with the crest.
We can’t get enough chaffinches in my view.
It would be a poor world without chaffinches, that is for sure. I feel guilty now, having concentrated on goldfinches so much over the years.
Annie’s bird looks like a hoopoe. I see Simon agrees. 🙂
Those are excellent bird portraits. The tulips still look nice enough in spite of the frost. A few things got blasted here over the last couple of days. I am worried about two of our apple trees. I think between the heat last summer and strange winter, they may not make it.
Glad to hear Dropscone is feeling better and brought scones. 🙂
We are waiting for our apple blossom to arrive.
Wonderful photos of your garden birds and I love the tulips standing tall and upright with some leaning over…very balletic (if theres’ such a word!) Wouldn’t mind seeing the bird in your daughter’s photo on my bird table- it will have to get much hotter and drier before that happens!
We would be way beyond disaster before that happens I would think.
Exceptionally cute and very round birds today.
I’m glad that Dropsone is back to delivering the scones again. Sometimes you only realise you’ve been a bit under the weather when you start to recover.
That was the case with Mrs Tootlepedal as well as Dropscone.