A quiet winter for us, partly weather, partly a family Christmas in Cornwall and partly getting the garden ready for Spring after a very wet nine months.

Another winter of heavy snow, the third in a row now, led to some unusual garden visitors for us, especially this Fieldfare.  This single bird stayed for around two weeks, taking advantage of the fresh fruit we put out every day:

As well as the garden bird we've been conducting winter thrush surveys for the BTO.  The summary is farmland is mostly a desert whereas land not farmed contains lots of bird food and therefore birds.  I wonder where the missing 44 million nesting birds were lost from?!?

Once the snow melted, the Nene tributary flooded again:

This is about the worst we've seen it, and this is the third flood of this level in the last nine months.  With all the preparation we've done to the hedge, the vegetable area, under the trees, in the orchard, hopefully we'll have a really good growing year this year.  Can't wait!