This year has brought a few new regular visitors to our garden, with the well camouflaged dunnock being one of them. A pair of these pretty little birds have formed a habit of entering the garden in one of two ways: flying in at high speed to land in the depths of the winter honeysuckle, hiding here, then depositing themselves onto the ground to feed, or, appearing from nowhere on the fence and heading straight to the ground feeder. Today being cloudy, there were fewer insects around for the pair to forage for, so the ground feeder it was.
As I wrote yesterday, sometimes you have to look at things closely to notice detail. Before today, I don't think I'd ever noticed the brown iris of the dunnock's eye, surrounded by tiny pale feathers. Some features of birds make the comparison between the class of birds and that of reptiles more obvious, and, for me, this particular detail makes that link.
We have no house sparrows in our area, but are enjoying the company of these 'hedge sparrows' making themselves at home in the garden.
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