It snowed!

The weather forecast was for heavy snow, so the day before I legged it to the South Coast to make sure I could attend my client meeting. Luckily my wife was snowed in! Thursday from the back of the house:













We have been heavily feeding the local bird population throughout the winter and today it really paid off. We have been seeing Bramblings in the garden for at least 2 weeks now, but they are very nervous birds, so no snaps possible. However today Helen scraped a small patch of snow away and put a load of seed down. This female Brambling was one of the first to show up:














You can actually make out the male at the bottom of the picture too. However this snap captures the male better (note the yellow beak):

















Also today we had another garden first, a Yellowhammer but he didn't hang around long enough to be snapped. We are now up to 29 species in the garden in 10 months, and the hedge is only just in the ground! Complete species record, including maximum numbers so far:

Blackbird (4), Blue Tit (5), Brambling (3), Bullfinch (1), Chaffinch (20+), Collared Dove (8), Crow (3), Cuckoo (1), Dunnock (3), Feral Pigeon (1), Goldfinch (40+), Great Tit (3), Greater Spotted Woodpecker (1), Greenfinch (3), House Martin (1), House Sparrow (50+), Kestrel (1), Long-tailed Tit (6), Magpie (10), Reed Bunting (4), Robin (3), Song Thrush (1), Sparrowhawk (1), Starling (30+), Swift (1), Willow Warbler (1), Woodpigeon (10), Wren (2), Yellowhammer (1). I haven't included the Black-headed Gulls overhead, or the Whitethroat in the hedgerow beyond our fence either..., maybe next summer he'll be back!