Chilly pigeons

The weather has been so relentlessly crap for the past few weeks that I'm beginning to forget what the sun looks like. We've had the wettest November in the history of mankind and December looks like it's going to do its best to get into the record books as well. It's also cold and grey and I have a cold. Meh.

But of course there are always photo opportunities and I spotted this lot perched in a tree above the faux well in St Ann's Well Gardens near where I live, huddled against the cold and looking as miserable as I felt trudging past them.

I suppose there's some comfort in the old maxim about there always being someone worse off than you - and sure enough the thought of not having to sit naked on a spindly branch on a cold December afternoon, feeling the rain seep into every orifice and the wind trying to dislodge me even as it was making the rain feel even colder somehow cheered me up no end.

Ah, the power of positive thinking.