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.

I took a trip down to Leigh on Sea yesterday. Timing was based on weather and personal committments and, as usual, I ended up being there at the wrong state of the tide. I parked at Two Tree Island and saw teal resting on the creek bank as well as the usual redshank and a few gulls. Walking down to the old town there were quite a few redshank around but I didn't see or hear any other waders, they were probably at the water's edge on the other side of the Leigh Sand. The first thing that struck me was the absence of turnstones around the cockle sheds. These have been a feature of this location for many years. Unlike my last couple of visits there were no egrets in Leigh Creek either. On the mud there were plenty of gulls, black headed, herring and both lesser and greater black backed. There were no brent geese visible on the mud and talking to locals I was told that they had all left. However, walking towards Chalkwell I saw two parties on the foreshore. Luch of course meant ...

Thursday night's heavy snow made access to the village difficult to say the least and I didn't brave the journey to the station. Unlike many though the wonders of the internet meant that I didn't have a day off but I could keep an eye on the bird feeders which are visible from the laptop. I think we had a full house with regard to the regular tit population. Blues, greats and coal definitely came to the feeder, long tailed were in my neighbour's tree and as I turned to look once something flew away which I think was a marsh or willow tit. On the ground the dunnocks were out in force and there always seemed to be a robin around and there was the occasional small group of starlings and the odd chaffinch. So far neither the goldfinches nor the woodpeckers have returned. In the front the fat feeder in the quince was frequented by a cock blackbird as well as regular great tits. With a clear sky today, but too cold to start a thaw, the clarity of every possible view was amanz...

I decided that it was time to start feeding seriously again and filled the main seed feeder with high energy mix and put a scoop of "blackbird mix" on the ground tray. The dunnock that was in the garden at the time showed a singular lack of interest. Later I heard the sound of a wood pigeon taking to the air and had a look out of the window. A pigeon was feeding from the ground tray and a starling was on the feeder. Within the next few minutes the feeder was visited by a pair of marsh or willow tits (too difficult to tell apart in the rather poor light this afternoon), a great tit and a blue tit. Altogether an encouraging start for the season.