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Showing posts from January, 2017
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Into 2017 Welcome to the first A9Birds blog of 2017 - I've purposefully left it until after 11 January for those still using the Julian calendar, and never quite got over losing 11 days back in the 18th Century! With the Winter Solstice now a memory, already the days are starting to clearly lengthen and watching the behaviour of various birds shows that Spring is coming...even though, as I write this, the garden is under six inches of snow.  Crossbill males were already singing back in December on nice, sunny days however it's not unusual as these birds are notoriously early breeders in order to maximise their access to seed cones in the various trees offering such. I'm not going to start the whole Crossbill species debate here, but I will say the song I've heard has been 'Scottish' to my ears!  The Coal Tits accompany on bagpipes, and Dunnocks on the squeeze box...okay, I'll stop there. Mr Crossbill looking for his next cone to prise apart R