Hungry Birds, Bad Photos & Frustration

Hungry Birds

We recently went through a cold, snowy spell where the birds were hungrier and more tolerant of my camera.  As I've mentioned before, I gave up using bird feeders, since the neighborhood cats were catching too many birds and instead I've been throwing the seed on the ground in a wide open area with no hiding spots.

 
This means I only get ground feeders and most of them are sparrows and brown, but that's okay, they're cheerful.  The other daily visitor is a family of Magpies.

bad photo of sparrows taken through frosty window.

 

I have watched this Magpie family over the last 3 years and noticed that most have remained in the area and still seem to spend time within their family.
They came down to feed in groups of three or less at one time, but there is 6 or 8 of them, in the family.
Each morning they stop by and if there is no food, they will sit on my roof and chatter.

Because it was so cold out I felt sorry for them and gave them dog food and a few pumpkin, sunflower and oatmeal muffins.

 

As you can see the photos are bad, first they were taken through a frosty window and second I could only get some of them to upload properly.

 I had to put them on Picasa Web Albums in order for blogger to take them, then they would only take two out of the whole album.

Has anyone else had problems uploading photos to blogger?

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Sparrows

Sparrows are wonderful, little birds that you can see bathing in puddles at parking lots, sharing fries at McDonalds or chirping from your eavestroughing.

The more people in an area, the more sparrows. I lived in the country for years and hardly saw one but a visit to my grandmother in town and I was treated to their constant symphony of cheerful songs.

Now that I live in the city, I've found them to be the most constant source of nature in my life.

in flocks of 50 or 60 every day and yes, they aren't exotic or unusual but they are very sweet and cheerful.

Because I was feeding them and because the winter here isn't very harsh, they stay all year round. A few winters ago it got very cold and I was curious to know where they were staying at night. We have a huge privet hedge surrounding the place and it seemed likely that they stayed there but it didn't seem like a very warm place.

One morning, it was very cold and I was going out to warm up my vehicle. I just happened to look up and in the rafters of the car port was a line of little sparrow butts. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen and I just had to draw it.

I'm sure you'll see many more sparrow images in the future.

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