Author: martintayler

Although we were still ploughing through muddy paths on a local walk this afternoon on the edge of the Frome Valley in Bristol, we felt a definite note of optimism as there were plenty of signs of regrowth.

Whilst many parts of Britain are feeling the cold with lots of snow here in the south west of England it was a very mild morning and I was able to do some birdwatching from home without even putting a sweater on.

Over the weekend 0f 29th-31st January the RSPB is asking people in the UK to spend an hour counting the birds in their garden or from their balcony. This is what we saw in our tiny urban garden on Saturday 30th from 9:15 to 10:15 am.

8 goldfinch
2 blue tits
1 house sparrow
1 coal tit
1 dunnock
2 blackbirds
2 magpies
2 jackdaws
1 starling
2 wood pigeons
2 collared doves
1 robin

I managed to photograph some of these birds from my bathroom window or by standing in the garden.

We have had our first snow of the winter and I’m very frustrated at home self-isolating; oh to be able get out and take some shots of snowy scenes! But as the French say “faute de grives on mange des merles” (“for lack of thrushes we eat blackbirds”, in other words “beggers can’t be choosers” or “half a loaf is better than no bread”) and I’ve taken a few shots from my garden.

We have found a local walk from home where we can avoid the large crowds of the local parks and more or less stick to green areas.

This morning we saw a few garden birds (blue tits, great tits, gold finches, dunnock and blackbirds) and heard lots of robins. I read recently that wrens are the most common birds in the UK; I must say that I find that surprising from the number of robins we see and hear on our local walks.

The robins are making lots of noise at the moment establishing their territories. But the noisiest and the cheeriest of all the birds we saw this morning was a song thrush. It may have been very easy to hear, and from quite some distance, but it was very difficult to get a decent view of it.

The sun only seems to shine at the weekends but I can’t cope with the huge number of people taking their daily lockdown exercise in our local park at that time; and so I have to content myself with seeing the world in black and white on a dull day.

A pied wagtail had no other colours to show anyway. However, the kingfisher did provide enough colour to make an impression on my camera sensor and put a smile on the face of the visitors to the park who are now getting used to spotting it on the aptly named island in the middle of the lake.

I felt like ranting and raving about the injustice of two girls being fined £200 for driving 5 miles to go for a socially distanced walk around a beauty spot in Derbyshire. I was even more furious this morning when I found that it was impossible to socially distance when walking around my local park due to the lack of consideration of other walkers and especially runners who make little or no effort to give you a wide birth as you pass. Both young and old looked at us as if we were bonkers as we continuously stepped off the path or stopped to allow others to pass. I bet there are a fair number of those who made no effort at all who are quick to blame politicians for whatever measures they take to stop the pandemic.

However, I then saw a kingfisher and I calmed down.

Reports of a pair of firecrests on The Downs in Bristol enticed us out on a gloomy cold day. We didn’t see them but we did enjoy our lockdown ration of one daily exercise.

The best of the birds we saw were a pair of redwing and a jay. It needed fairly bright birds to get any sort of photograph in the very poor light.

As we returned to our car there was a very surreal moment when we heard the very loud roar of a lion. With lockdown (and the lack of cars) we had forgotten that we had parked right next to Bristol Zoo.

It felt that this robin was giving us a special Christmas welcome as we walked around our local park this morning.

Robins are the nation’s favourite bird and have such strong association with Christmas that it seems very appropriate to wish everyone who reads my blog a very Merry Christmas by posting this picture and my header photo which I took earlier this week at Tyntesfield in North Somerset.

It was so lovely to see some sunshine in the park this morning after some very gloomy and wet days. It was unusual to see the grey heron fishing in the water. The cormorant was clearly enjoying drying its wings in the sunshine.

Health warning – photographs taken on a dismal morning in December in North Somerset probably don’t have a lot of merit or interest for visitors to this blog but for the record (and to keep me occupied) I am publishing a blog of our visit to the National Trust estate of Tyntesfield (see the National Trust website for details and better photos) and our brief visit to the nearby seaside town of Clevedon.

There were a few trappings of Christmas to be seen but, as the house is currently closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic , nothing like the fabulous Christmas decorations which we saw last year.

At Tyntesfield we saw robins, blackbirds, dunnocks and thrushes and at Clevedon black-headed gulls and a pied wagtail. Oh for the black redstart that has been reported on the pier at Clevedon!

We thought we would take an early-ish walk to Eastville Park before the crowds arrived but clearly we were’t early enough and, as the park soon became quite congested, we limited the time we spent there.

We were rewarded with a good view of a kingfisher on the River Frome but I’m sorry to say I was much too slow to get a shot.

There were three grey herons on the lake and lots of cormorants. On a small brook that feeds into the River Frome there were several birds taking a bath, including a song thrush which I haven’t seen in the park for a while.

The sun didn’t last long in the park and neither did we.