Good morning, sunshine

Ah, February, the coldest and most unpredictable month in England, and the time when all of us fall ill for one reason or another...so of course, I'm down with a cold -- not too bad, but just enough for me to feel like sleeping in today...except, at about 5:30 am, this small brown songbird perched on the fence outside my backyard and started singing the same tune, over and over, for about three and a half hours. I tried throwing socks at the window to scare it off, but it quickly figured out that there's some sort of wonderful transparent barricade between my projectiles and its perch and continued singing unabated.

The only time it ever stops singing is when it's down on the ground foraging for the food I stupidly started leaving out before winter, thinking it might keep the poor birds from starving as suggested by the local bird society. Well, they sure aren't hungry now. They're at war. The backyard is a virtual battlezone of blackbirds, robins, wrens, sparrows, pigeons, wood doves, chickadees, squirrels, and god knows what else. My favorite bird's been bullied into hiding by a pack of voracious dun-colored pipsqueaks who are skilled in the art of chasing bigger birds away. As it's the middle of winter and they've come to depend on the food, I just have to tolerate the early morning cacaphony -- and I did, until this stinking brown bird showed up and started its incessant mating call or wakeup chant or battle cry or whatever the hell it is.

Back to bed for me -- think I'll read under the covers today, at least until my awful three-hour statistics course this afternoon. On a happy note, I'm going to Trinity Ball! Let the hype begin...