Poor Robin

If he was a wet robin the other day, he was an even wetter robin today. When he first flew in I thought it was a fledgling, but they don't have any orange, that only develops after a few months. The other bird in the pair managed to stay bone dry. He rather reminds me of a Penny Black stamp that has an owl which always makes me think of a pine-cone that has been warmed up and started to expand. I used to love burning pine-cones from the garden when I had a fire in my bedroom  - first the smell as the resin started heating, then watching them open up and start to glow as they burnt, and the tinkling sound they'd make if you hit them with a poker after they'd burnt and were just charred black.

I was happy to get such good photos, as the camera was set with manual exposure optimised for the tip of a branch in the mahonia, where I'd noticed the bluetit was regularly alighting.

It was that sort of weather today - gale force winds with mostly blue skies but occasional bursts of rain. It was also bin-collection day for the green bins, but since I'd already had to pick two of the neighbours' bins up and gather all the paper and packaging that had spilled out and started to blow down the road,  I decided that  as ours wasn't even half full it could wait for the next collection.