Tag: Christmas cake

The world’s first Siberian Thrush Christmas cake?

This year’s wildlife-themed Christmas cake celebrates one of the best birds that I saw in 2025, the Siberian Thrush on Mainland Shetland. Made of clay and painted in acrylic, the bird turned out a little more blue than I had intended, but I think it still works as cake decoration:

Check out those undertail coverts!

Footprints.

I had intended to use real holly leaves and berries from our garden to decorate the cake, but fortunately I checked their toxicity first. I discovered that all parts of the holly plant, stem, leaves and berries, are toxic to humans. A lucky escape for my family!

Below, the real thing, photographed at Loch Asta with Ben Sheldon, as we travelled back from Fair Isle, a fantastic experience:

Happy Christmas to all!

An Albatross for Christmas

This year’s bird-themed Christmas cake celebrates albatrosses. Having failed once again to persuade my wife of my first choice of cake (an Ivory Gull on a freshly killed seal, think red, think white!), the cake this year is inspired by the Mouse-free Marion Project. Funds are being raised to eradicate introduced mice from Marion Island, which have developed a taste for seabird chicks, which they eat alive. This predation is seriously impacting the populations of the many albatross and petrel species that breed on this sub-Antarctic island.

The cake was made using a Nigel Slater recipe and the albatross skimming over the top of the cake was made from modelling clay and then painted with acrylics. The albatross is a Tristan Albatross, based on the bird on the front cover of the second edition of Peter Harrison’s “Seabirds”. This mature male plumage is one of the few that can be distinguished in the field from the more numerous Snowy Albatrosses, which breed on Marion Island. I’m no artist, but I think it is identifiable!

Happy Christmas to all and let’s all try to avoid being eaten alive by mice!

A Christmas Jack Snipe

My youngest daughter suggested making the theme of this year’s Christmas cake the fabulous Jack Snipe that graced the Lye Valley earlier this month. After a bit of experimentation with modeling clay and spaghetti (not natural companions of the usual Christmas cake), we came up with this!

Happy Christmas to everyone!

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