Wet, very overcast and gloomy damp air is not the best weather for photos or for that matter any type of outdoor activity. Well if you live in England you had better get used to it! It’s like this more often than not. So it was a day for indoors and computers. I decided to join the PBASE photo gallery web sit. In addiion to my Flickr galleries I thought I would use it for selected images. I am pleased with what I have done so far and you can have a look and see if you agree, HERE
In the garden though, in-spite of the weather there really was a lot of activity. When the rain stopped, I assume the birds had to make the best of it and feed. At one time there was at least 6 Blackbirds in the garden. This is unusual so I decided to take a really good like to see what was going on. The attraction was the cotoneaster berries at the bottom of the garden. Amongst the birds was the one pictured above. This is a bird entering it’s first winter. You can tell this by the mixture of brown feathers and darker black. This is called a partial juvenile moult. The eye ring has yet to develop and the beak remains brown. All this makes this bird seem very unusually marked but once you know what is going on, then not so hard to work out. However the bird below is a totally different story and I really hope to get a better look at it sometime.

Firstly, it is a hen, the beak is mostly yellow so I am assuming it’s an adult. But what is so very unusual is the grizzled markings that can be seen. Under the chin there is an area of white but the breast appears to be diffused with whitish flecking. My experience with aviculture tells me that this is not a particularly unusual variety or “sport” in captivity where lots of in-breeding happens, but it does make it a very interesting wild bird.
With the light being so poor it was very hard to get good photos. As I sat upstairs looking out carefully at the Blackbirds I was really amazed at the birds that were coming and going and using the apple tree as a stop-off point. Not in great numbers but they would have easily been over-looked. There were Great Tits, Blue Tits and the first Chaffinch of the season as well as 3 Wood Pigeons pigging out on the berries as well.