Wintry Weather

A week or so of relatively hard weather at the end of February has brought even more birds to the bird table and peanut feeders. The most numerous are the great tits, the largest of the tit clan. They are smart looking birds, with a yellow belly with a black stripe running from under their beaks down to their tails. There are plenty of blue tits around as well and a few coal tits.
The coal tits are much less colourful than their cousins, with a black head, white cheeks, an altogether duller colour, but easily identified by a white patch on the nape of their necks. They are the smallest of all the British tits, and are very fond of conifers, which is probably why we get so many in the garden.
My favourites are the lovely pinkish long- tailed tits. In early winter they will arrive in bands of eight or twelve to feed at the table, but now it is just a pair coming and I am pretty sure they are going to nest in a very spiny berberis bush at the front of the bungalow. They seem to be coming and going from that area non- stop.They have to wait their turn to get on to the table, queuing up in the wistaria or the lilac waiting for the more aggressive great tits to have their fill.
The nuthatch waits for no-one, and will drive away even the great tits with a few stabs of its sharp pointed beak. They are wonderfully agile and often feed upside down on the peanuts. They particularly like the black sunflower seeds that I put out and will fly off with them to a favourite fork or crevice in a tree where they wedge them and then crack the hard casing open. They use the same technique on hazel nuts, if the squirrels leave them any. They are very attractive, a bit like miniature woodpeckers, with a black eye stripe, a blue-grey back and chestnut flanks. They climb up and down tree trunks looking for insects, always on the go. I shall have to keep an eye on this pair and try to see where they nest. Unlike woodpeckers they don't dig out a hole. They find one that is too big and then plaster in the opening with mud to make it just the right size. This stops other birds and predators from getting in. If woodpeckers are the master carpenters then nut hatches are the master plasterers.
This morning I put out some apple pieces for the blackbirds and thrushes but when we had our elevenses, a female muntjak came on to the ride and eat some. She has a regular run across the top of the ride and we often see her, but as she moved off today she was limping heavily. She could not bear much weight on her left front leg and there was a dark mark on her shoulder, just at the right height for a car bumper. I hope she is not badly hurt. I would not wish a slow death on anything, even if she does eat my wood anemones and camellias.
I still have my fingers crossed for enough snow to get the toboggan out, play snowballs and do a bit of tracking. My dad named me Wendy so that I would never grow up! Wendy Bathurst