Soggy Tit.

Another dreich day, so I wasn’t keen to go out and so spent half an hour at the kitchen sink watching the garden birds. Interestingly, we had two song thrushes today, one pulling up worms (but none as spectacular as yesterday) and the other going for morsels too small for me to see. It was either picking up breadcrumbs, or a variety of small beasties.
 
The blackbirds were notable for being waterproof; in spite of the continuous rain, the beads of water stood up on their feathers until the birds shook the drops off. On the other hand, the poor long-tailed tits were clearly struggling. I may have commented before that the small chappies like these have difficulty in laying down enough fat by the evening to provide them with the energy to keep warm through the night, and so they will cuddle up to keep warm. It’s a poorly documented phenomenon; the highest number of wrens recorded in a British standard nest box on a winter’s night is 63 (gleaned from the RSPB’s website). These poor chaps have to feed throughout the day to lay down the fat – whatever the weather. Today they must have lost a lot of calories trying to keep warm due to having wet clothing. It was comforting to see that, as the rain eased (but didn’t cease) later in the afternoon, they found time to preen and dry off.

Perhaps I'll be inclined to get out tomorrow.