Misty Morning, Birdlife Around the Farm

At the beginning of the week the Farmer & I had the chance of a day away from the farm thanks to a dental appointment in Lampeter and so we wended our way up the coast to Aberaeron before heading inland to Lampeter. The pretty painted house of Aberaeron were being battered by strong winds and standing at the sea wall beyond the relative calm of the harbour, was extremely blowy and the sea was raging and roaring in a very satisfactory manner.
In complete contrast, today has dawned with clear blue skies, a heavy mist in the valley which promises a fine day and birds singing merrily.
As I walked the dogs to the far side of the farm we rose above the mist and were treated to the beautiful sight of skeleton outlines of some of our great oak trees silhouetted like black lace against the pearlescence of the swirling mists.
In an oak tree a couple of days ago I heard, then saw three lesser spotted woodpeckers with their vivid scarlet flashes,squabbling over territory, or wives, in an early display of spring madness. We rarely see woodpeckers, though we hear them yammering away quite often in the summer. There is too much activity around the yard and the house & cottage for many of the birds to come close, though we are fortunate to have a large oak tree near the house which is inhabited by tree-creepers, nuthatches, thrushes, robins, blackbirds & blue-tits. The hedges around the garden are always full of argumentative hedge-sparrows and blue-tits.
Yesterday the first skein of Canada geese that we've seen this year flew over the yard making their beautiful haunting call. A second skein then appeared and joined the first so there were about a dozen birds or so. They then swirled around our two nearest ponds for a while before heading off up the valley.

After the miserable rain of yesterday it is lovely to have a dry sunny morning and I am now off to tidy up the farmshop as it has been rather neglected over the winter months.