Mrs P

Mrs Pecker came to visit this lunchtime.  We must have some very tasty insects in our lawn as she was there for quite a while searching for them.  We see green woodpeckers in the garden reasonably regularly.  This one is female, (you can tell because she has no red moustach by her beak (although its not brilliantly obvious from this angle it was more obvious in some of the other shots that I took).  If you look at this shot that I took of the male in a similar spot in November (or should that by Mo-vember?) you should just about be able to see the difference.

She makes a useful addition to the RSPB garden watch catalogue for us this year - a little bit of exotica when compared to the more usual varieties of tit, goldfinches, pigeons, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds and jackdaws.  The jackdaws are particularly entertaining as some of the larger ones have learned to almost hover as they snatch food from one of the feeders.  They can get one foot on the feeder, but have to then flap inelegantly while grabbing a beak full. I hope to get a shot of it at some stage, but they are in and out so quickly I would have to stake-out the feeder with the camera set up on a tripod ready to go, and I'm not that desperate for the shot ... yet. 

Its been another very wet day here.  Definitely not a day for being outside.  So we've been getting on with the weekend chores.  Its nice and relaxing, not a bad way to spend part of the weekend.  I hope your weekends are at least as enjoyable.