a pair of tits

Last October I posted a picture of a long-tailed tit on the rosebush outside my window.

Now there's a couple come back

They've been chirruping incessantly outside

flying up on to the window,

hovering by the wheelie bins



and generally making their presence felt.



a pair of tits
sing a song of springtime
chit chum cherup

a contribution by Gerald England to the spring song theme at One Deep Breath.

Update: Wednesday 4th April.

One of the tits has been tapping at my window again this morning; in fact it has been slightly annoying. Here I've been typing away at the computer and then suddenlt I'm interupted by this rap, tap, rap on the window.

I briefly saw three of them balancing on the telephone wire.

More information on these birds can be found at British Garden Birds, where you can listen to a recording of their song and call.

Lunar eclipse

This haiga has appeared on Spring Haiku 2007

A number of people around Europe were trying to photograph the lunar eclipse last night. Here are a few:

• Ayrshire
• Bordeaux
• Mainz
• Rome
• Taunton
• Tel Aviv
• Torino
• Venice

There is another nice set of photos on the BBC news website.

The first photo was taken just before 10.30pm. This second photo was taken about two hours later. To my naked eye it looked just like a normal crescent moon. Why my camera seems to have taken a double-image is a mystery to me. I just point, shoot and hope.

Both Sides Out

My poem Both Sides Out which I wrote way back in 1971 has just appeared on Bolts of Silk.

Mind you, spring is in the air. The Winter Haiku blog is now closed. My last contribution was hailstones.

My first contribution to the new Spring Haiku 2007 blog asks is it spring yet?, a haiga that uses a crop from the photograph of St Thomas the Apostle Church posted on Hyde DP

The Iceman cometh

It is starting to feel cold here now but it is not nearly as cold as it is in parts of Canada where it is currently -18 deg Celsius.

These photos were taken by Jay Black from his sun deck in Vancouver.

Another photo by Jay forms the basis of a haiga collaboration between the two of us which can be seen on Winter Haiku 2006.

A bird on the rose-bush

I'm posting this after seeing Birds Talk on Kris' Little Town in Hungary.

There's this rose-bush just outside my window. It is visited frequently by tits and other small birds. Usually they are so quick that they are almost impossible to photograph. But now that autumn is here with a vengeance, there is less foliage for them to hide in and I managed to get this shot of one of them.