Silver Eyes

It's that time of year again once the frosts hit that we we start to feed the birds. This year we have been bombarded with a Fighter Squadron of Spitfire Sparrows! We would have at least 50 if not more of the little blighters! They sit in the bushes and make the whole place shake when they all depart at the same time! They also hurtle around and around the house like there is no tomorrow!!! Pesky grain stealing little things but they are sort of sweet and nice to know we still have them here after their total unexplained demise in London!!!
Talking of unexplained!!..... The main birds we aim to feed here are the Silver Eyes.
Save me writing it all out l have cheekily cut and pasted this from a website on Australian birds. Well worth the read to understand these amazing little things!
Mystery migration
''These tiny birds are no more than 13 centimetres long and every year make an annual 1,600 kilometre trek from Tasmania, across Bass Strait, and as far north as Queensland. It's the equivalent of a human swimming from Auckland to Sydney, then walking to Cairo!! 
It's usually April before the Silvereyes start to migrate north and, by May, many of these amazing birds are turning up along the coast of southern and central New South Wales and some as far north as Queensland.
But this migration is a complex and mysterious business. Some Tasmanian Silvereyes don't migrate at all, preferring instead to rug up and spend winter on the Apple Isle. Others strike out across the water and head west when they hit the mainland, ending up as far as Adelaide.
Crossing Bass Strait is the biggest hurdle for the tiny Silvereye, and researchers are still working out how they do it.
Researchers believe it's most likely they achieve this feat by island-hopping, breaking the distance between Tasmanian and the mainland into several shorter stages.
This theory is based on the fact that large flocks of Silvereyes have been sighted on various islands in Bass Strait during both autumn and spring.
The Silvereye (Zosterops lateralis) is a small bird that weighs about 10 grams. Its name came about because of the thin white rings of colouring around its eyes that give the impression it is wearing silver-rimmed glasses.
There are several races of Silvereyes, but it's only the Tasmanian race that performs the incredible migration across Bass Strait and up the east coast of Australia. Other races do migrate and cover considerable distances, but they don't compete when it comes to this annual long-distance migration.
Once they hit the mainland, they often hook up with their mainland cousins and form large mixed flocks for their summer holiday sojourn. Some flocks linger around the same small mainland region while others tend to migrate northward following defined routes along the coastal plains."
Thank you website!!!
So the tiny little things we feed every morning are the brave few that chose not to fly the treacherous Bass Strait  to warmer climates but have decided to take their chances in our cold frosty Winters down here. Lucky for them, Geoff creates delicious ((((if you are a bird!!!)))) sausages of fat, honey, seeds, strawberries, oats......all rolled up into one big lunch!

Well worth feeding don't you think?