Chiltern Birder

With the mild weather we are not seeing a lot of birds in the garden yet. The fat feeder in the front garden is seeing very little activity. In the back the starlings are busy with the fat feeder and goldfinches are regulars on the sunflower seeds. There are random visits by blue tits and this morning I was lucky enough to see a coal tit pay a very brief visit. At ground level a pair of wood pigeons stamp over the plants and a dunnock and a wren occasionally come out of hiding. Not far away in the fields there is a lot of activity. A flock of skylarks was busy among recently sprouted brassicas while yellowhammers were flitting through a hawthorn hedge. It was pure chance that one was still for long enough to be identified with the naked eye. Normally I only see them from the car when they find singing posts on roadside hedges in the spring. Away from home the River Chess is in a fairly poor way, at the moment rising from the spring by the Water Meadow car park in the town. It is sh...

A flock of long tailed tits provided a little variety in the garden today. They settled on the starling feeder for a little while but, naturally, flew away when I moved to see if anything was on the sunflower hearts. The River Chess is flowing well at the moment with the old mill leat coming down from Pednormead End carrying enough water to actually turn a water wheel. More is probably due to surface water after the recent heavy rain rather than any rising of the water table. In the mean time a pair of mallards and a moorhen had returned to he pool above the Town Bridge

Walking over the Town Bridge the river was looking very sluggish with a pair of moorhens walking through it and much of the bed blocked by weeds. There was still enough, however, to attract a grey wagtail. There was no flow above Water Lane with all the water coming from the spring by the car park. It shows how little the water table has really recovered when you remember that once the river had sufficient flow to drive a mill at this point.