Hot weather, at last!

So after the "beast from the east" and all the snow that came with it, we finally have some hot weather. Time for summer clothes, sunbathing and barbeques. One of the things that I like the most about spring and summer is listening to and watching the birds in the garden. I've noticed that not many species of birds actually visit our garden, just house sparrows, pigeons, magpies, black birds and sometimes gulls fly over.

I have two bird houses in the garden and I think one might be occupied as I saw a bird at the entrance to one of them the other day :-) I have four or five bird feeders and could spend ages just watching the birds picking out the seeds they like the best and chucking the rest away. I've also noticed this year that they seem to be spending quite some time on the ground, so perhaps they are spotting worms or insects. I put out some bread out for the birds, wondering if they preferred that to the seeds, but one of my dogs, Tilly, climbed up onto the kennel, which is next to one of the feeders, and started helping herself to the bread. I then had to move the feeder away from the kennel. She is a little pudding! The birds had the remainder of the bread in no time!

I have a Sigma 50 - 500mm lens - it is huge - so I dug that out and took a few snaps out in the garden earlier this week. I thought I would put a couple of them on here.

I am off to Kew Gardens later this week and am so looking forward to that. Hopefully I will get lots more pictures :-)