There’s something alive in the chimney. Which is mildly creepy. I just hope to god it manages not to die up there. On the subject of which:
Q. What goes ‘shriek shriek bonk’?
A. A parakeet flying into a window pane.
Which I heard happen yesterday, but as there wasn’t a stunned parakeet lying outside the house afterwards I assume it managed to escape without too much more than a headache to show for it.
The parakeets only reached this part of London about three years ago, but now we have flocks of them every day; there are often seven or eight on the feeders and more in the surrounding trees. They’re attractive and full of character, but as ever with foreign species you worry about their impact on the native birds; they must be competing for nest-sites if nothing else.
I was having a go at photographing the juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker that comes to the birdfeeder, but it’s kind of tricky. My success rate when digiscoping is never that high at the best of times; and as you can see, it’s not temperamentally inclined to stay still:
Still, the motion blur can be a fun effect:
And it makes it all the more gratifying when one of the pictures comes out just right.
