Chiltern Birder

 After a couple of days of frost the garden looks more like a typical winter's day with birds visiting throughout the day. Blue tits are the main visitor plus one or two marsh (or possibly willow) tits and the occasional great tit. A flock of long tailed tits paid a fairly brief visit. Robins in the back garden have paired, seemingly a little later than the ones in the front.  Due to ill health the ivy on my back fence hasn't been trimmed and has developed a good crop of berries. The only bird that I have seen showing interest has been a wood pigeon which spent some time yesterday feasting on them. In the front I put out a fat block yesterday afternoon which, so far, has attracted a grey squirrel. The pair of robins and the occasional blackbird are active on the hanging table.

 The lack of finches in the garden is disturbing. I am seeing blue tits and great tits coming to the feeders for sunflower seeds but the boards of goldfinches seem to have vanished.. In the front garden we now have a pair of robins which come to a small hanging table which gets a mix of fat pellets, dried mealworms and pinhead oatmeal. This mix also attracts wood pigeons and blackbirds although the latter seem to prefer the fallen quinces. Over the bank holiday I was staying in Romford, where I was brought up. On a visit to Bedfords Park I came across two species that would have been unheard of when I was brought up there. There was a flock of parakeets in the woods at the north end of the park while a pair of buzzards were circling between the park and Havering-atte-Bower.