Lucky me! When stopping by at home today I spotted an unusual bird in the trees in our garden. Fetched my cam and got some nice shots. When checking the pics I saw it was a female Eurasian Bullfinch. These are rather rare guests in Iceland this bird being the first record since 2011. Hope I'll see it more often.

Had the weekly check today. There's no snow around and the horses in really good condition. They were happy to see us and the big bags of bread we brought along as a Christmaspresent. 
Afterwards we had a nice chat with the farmers and the sheep managed to sneak some treats, too.

Visited our horses today and brought some treats along. Everyone happy!

Hjördís has arrived for her Christmasvacation and today we made laufabrauð, the traditional Icelandic thin bread eaten at Christmas. This time Ingólfur made it from scratch and I think we'll keep doing that in the future. It was fun to cut various patterns and then see how it would look after deepfrying.

Had to fetch Embla from Ísólfsstaðir today as she kept going through the fence to get to the even better pasture. All the other stayed where they were supposed to be but her majesty had different ideas. We can't have her doing that all the time so we fetched her and brought her to the securityprison with electric fences. Now our youngsters have a new victim for playing until we're going to take her inside. 

Since Ingólfur started feeding the birds in the garden, we've had quite some interesting guests around. Mostly redwings, but there've been 3 blackbirds, at least 2 blackcaps and now fieldfares joined, too. Not to forget about the raven...
The fieldfares are really cheeky and chase everybody else away. But sometimes they are so busy chasing others that they don't have time to eat. Think they'll have to learn to share.

Visited some happy horses at Ísólfsstaðir today. As the weather was beautiful we decided to go for a walk and the whole herd followed us. The horses had been happily munching away close to the gate most of the time and there was little grass left at that place. But as there are about 100 ha of pasture there are for sure places they hadn't visited yet and we found one on our walk. The herd liked it quite much there and stayed when we left.

and a race was what we got when visiting the mares and youngsters today. Pandóra and Hugleikur love to race the car. On our arrival the group just came running towards us, got some bread and then the 2 youngsters followed and raced our car when we went on checking the fence. They had so much fun!

Earlier this evening I saw a lot of people posting pics of Northernlights in our area. First I was a bit lazy to go, but then I decided to check on our friend's horses and try getting shot with them. Difficult, but definitely worth it. The horses were really interested in what I was doing there and one of them even taking care none would come too close to me nor the camera. Hope you like the pics.

I wasn't finished setting up my Christmaslights in the garden. First I had to get more brushwood to protect my plants from the frost before decorating. Finally found a good source today and after filling the trunk of our car and covering my flowerbeds I was ready to put on the lights. Think it looks nice.

That's what our gardenbirds thought when a raven came and stole their food. Ingólfur had put some old bread and stuff like that on an old treetrunk in the garden where various birds like redwings, a blackbird and a blackcap had been dining. Well, the raven was happy with his loot and took off to tell his friends. Now it's just wait and see if he comes back.
I've been busy on the wood turning lathe and tried to turn crooked trees. It's getting better, but far from perfect. Still I like to exercise and hopefully get better.

When your horses have their well deserved autumnbreak, 2 youngsters are with a trainer and you have a lot of spare time you go for a walk. That's what we did today, but even then there were some horses...

...from my haybale? Or to be precise from my haybales! There were 2 haybales with huge holes in the plastic and a very guilty looking reddun mare. And no, it wasn't Vordís! Pandóra had discovered that the battery for the fence was empty and the hay was sooo tempting that she just leaned into the fence until she could reach the bales. Of course it wasn't enough to taste one, lot better to taste if the next one was as tasty... You can imagine that I wasn't too happy about that. So we fixed the electricity and put extra power on the fence around the bales. 
When we had left she of course had to try the fence again. Wasn't happy about the shock she got, but tried again and then even sent her friend Hugleikur to try. They both got the same results and decided to leave the fence alone for the moment.

Winter is coming, the days are getting shorter and shorter and it's time to light up the darkness a bit. So I used my sparetime today and put up the Christmaslights on our fence and parts of the flowerbed. Like the look!

The last 2 days we helped at Hólmavað with checking all the sheep. Both ewes, rams and those supposed to be the future breedingstock. Difficult to decide who's supposed to live and who's going to the slaughterhouse. In the end there were around 40 yearlings left who'll be bred for the first time. One of them is now mine. It's a black and white triplet and I'm looking forward to getting to know her better. Her number is 20-155 and now I'll have to find a name.