He's always had a way with the birds...

I heard the recognisable KLANK of a bird's beak hitting the window today, and ran out of the study to see what/how it was.

To my surprise it was a blue tit. They're not usually that daft. And they know the garden - so I can only assume it was hurrying away from something that scared it.

I crouched on the floor and looked through the window of the patio door and sighed at its poor little upside down body lying still on the cold, damp patio slab with its feet in the air and its head turned to one side. (Okay, perhaps not exactly upside down - it wasn't standing on its head)

But as I looked closer I saw its chest was moving up and down and its eyes were moving. At first that made me more sad - I imagined it dying slowly or being played with by a cat or attacked by a bigger bird.

Richard opened the patio door a little and the blue tit turned its head to look at him.
I blurted something about how he had to pick it up and put it on something so that it was off the ground, and then ran to the garage to see what I could find.
In my panic all I could find was a small, tray-like ground feeder that I've bought for the robins and chaffinches so I passed Richard that and he went to pick up our patient.

As he walked over the blue tit did an incredible impression of that scene in Death Becomes Her when Meryl Streep's character gets up after falling down a long flight of stairs and clicks her body back into shape. But it still didn't move from its position so Richard picked it up gently and walked into a space away from the window.

It sat on his thumb and stared at him. He held his hand up so it could fly away and it flapped its wings but changed its mind. Instead it hopped onto Richard's shoulder and looked around. However scary this human being was, flying was still a scarier option (I'd rather hang out with Richard than fly anywhere, so I understand).

Eventually it flapped a foot or 2 to the broad bean support and roosted there, and took five. (By the way, isn't Dave Brubeck's Take Five a really clever experiment in music ?)

I was absolutely thrilled.

I love blue tits.

The rest of the day has been a bit of an insomnia hangover, dreary, damp, teaspilling day.

The only way insomnia hangovers are better than alcohol hangovers is the fact that you don't have that problem of worrying what you did last night.

Did some shop stuff.

That's about it.