The communal puddle

 

Before I was able to park my car in our garage, I used to park it on the lawn. After several years of doing this, there were a few holes in the lawn where the ground got a bit soft and muddy over the winter. All that is left now is one dent in the lawn that fills with water whenever it rains. The birds love it! So much so that sometimes I will put a bucket or two of water in it for them to play in when there are been no rain.

So rejuvenated the puddle this afternoon with a bit of water and within minutes I had a huge number of birds splashing about in it. There were blackbirds, starlings, chaffinches, sparrows and waxeyes all in there together! It made for a very crowded puddle. The puddle is the one place where I haven’t seen any of the bird hierarchy that I witness in the trees and feeding stations. They just share the puddle without a care.

The waxeyes are very cute when they are wet, their feathers look so bedraggled and their big eyes just look so forlorn and sad. Either that or they catch me watching them and turn into angry birds! They give me such faces, as if to tell me that their privacy is important and I am violating it! I take no notice at all and carry on photographing them.

Oh on the blackbird front, we have a nest with eggs residing on the side of our fence in a clematis bush. Unfortunately I can’t get the camera in there or I would be recording their progress, but I can see them which is kind of fun. I just hope none of the neighbourhood cats find it. I don’t think they would be able to get in easily so they should be pretty safe.