sliding into winter

It's officially winter.  We've started feeding the birds.  While the long, mild autumn went on we left them to get on with it, telling each other that there was lots of natural food for them to eat, but yesterday I went and put seed on the table, and today the Systems Administrator filled up the fat ball container and the peanut holder.  The SA bought a fresh bag of peanuts to be on the safe side, rather than use up last year's, since peanuts can go off and become toxic to birds, and it would be a shame to poison ours under the guise of feeding them.

It didn't take the birds long to find the food.  Do some of them remember the drill from last year, or are they simply very observant?  Piles of mixed seed suddenly appearing on a wooden table and peanuts inside a metal cage are not at all natural.  So far we have had chaffinches, great tits, hedge sparrows and robins, and as I'm typing this the first long tailed tit has just turned up.  The low winter light puts a soft sheen on the pinkish breast of the chaffinch and the lemon yellow of the great tit, so that they look like something painted by Vermeer.  The blackbirds have taken a look at the table, but they tend to stick with berries and hips until they've exhausted the natural supply.

The robin would like to keep everything on the table for itself, and flies belligerently at the other birds, including rival robins.  Given that all robins look identical, I don't in fact know if it is the same robin trying to guard the table against all comers, or a succession of different ones taking it in turns to pose with the food.  A couple of dunnocks took advantage of one inter-robin squabble to slide in for a quiet turn on the table.  They are modest little birds, as self effacing as the robins are attention seeking, with brown bodies a shade slimmer than the tits, and pale buff undersides.

The house is almost as wintry as the garden, since the window fitters kept the doors open for most of the day.  I quietly closed the sitting room double doors at one point, as it was so cold, and they didn't seem to be going backwards and forwards to their van, but the next time I went past they had opened it again, and I realised that without the ventilation, the chemical smell of sealants became overwhelming.  The kitchen is icy despite the Aga, having been without a window for half the afternoon.

A great sense of quiet and privacy descended once the fitters had gone.  There were only two here today, now the monster window doesn't need shifting, and they were a nice, polite pair of lads who have done what looks like a very neat job.  But you can't relax with strangers in the house, even apart from the sound of heavy drills.  They have done what looks like a first class installation, and I am very pleased with it, but also relieved that they have finally gone away.  The whole project was only supposed to take half a day for both windows when the firm booked the date with us, so I should say that their estimator had misjudged that one badly.