Big Garden Birdwatch

For over 30 years now the RSPB has been conducting a garden birdwatch at this time of year. The public are invited to take part by watching and recording the birds they see in one hour in their garden or a park and sending in their results by post or on-line. Because of the hard winter it is particularly important this year.  My results were:

Blackbird: 3
Dunnock: 1
Chaffinch: 4
Coal tit 1
House sparrow 1
Robin: 1

We usually have goldfinches visiting the garden. Sometimes as many as six or seven at a time, but suddenly they seem to have disappeared.

Bullfinch

Bullfinches are occasional visitors to our garden. This one was in our neighbour's tree but eventually came into our garden. It seemed to like the seeds on the St Johns Wort.

Clouds over Largo Bay

 Pink-tinged clouds above dark cumulus at dusk over Largo Bay.

The Moon and Jupiter

The planet Jupiter is the brightest object in the evening sky just now. This picture was taken last night. It's not very clear, but shows a waxing crescent moon and Jupiter. The picture was taken facing West so Jupiter is seen South of the moon. From now on Jupiter will grow fainter and appear further from the moon.

Swans in Largo Bay

 A pair of adult mute swans with three juveniles on the sands at Lower Largo.

Swans taking flight. Notice the snow covered hills on the other side of the Forth.

Shelduck

Amongst the gulls swimming off Lower Largo Pier, I noticed a duck which I hadn't seen before in this area. Unfortunately, I didn't have my binoculars but I took a photo and zoomed in once I got it on to the computer.  Identified it as a shelduck. The gulls were mostly black headed gulls, in winter plumage, and a juvenile herring gull.

Redwing

Spotted this redwing feeding on cotoneaster berries in a neighbour's garden in Lundin Links. Not a very good photo but can just see the red area under the wing and the prominent off-white stripe above the eye.

In our own garden lots of goldfinches feeding on the nyger seeds, also long-tailed tits feeding on the peanuts as well as blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, thrushes.