It was chilly this morning but the sun broke through in the afternoon and I enjoyed my daily exercise walking between Stoke Park and Eastville Park. It was very muddy around Duchess Pond in Stoke Park and I was glad I had chosen to wear wellies.
I only went as far as the entrance to Eastville Park as I spent too long watching 4 long-tailed tits building nests. What a treat.
As part of the National Gardens Scheme we were able to visit the garden of Algars Mill, a 2 acre woodland garden bisected by the River Frome near Iron Acton just north of Bristol.
The main feature of this splendid garden at this time of the year is the spring bulbs and shrubs; in particular the wild Newent daffodils.
It was wonderful on this splendid day to breathe the countryside and to take some exercise in this glorious garden avoiding the crowds of our local park.
A definite note of optimism today with beautiful wall to wall sunshine – at times there was real warmth in the sun and we even sat in the garden to have a late morning coffee.
The highlights of our walk in our local park were a jay, a gold crest (sadly only one chance to take a photo and I did miserably) and long tail tits (I didn’t fare much better with them either).
I thought the blue tit singing in the sun with blue sky behind was my best effort.
To any readers of my blog I apologise that the scope of my blogs is very limited, but such are the necessities of a lockdown. I felt very privileged this morning to have such lovely views of two of my favourite birds: a kingfisher and a grey wagtail. I also enjoyed seeing the gulls (lesser black-backed and black-headed) on the frozen lake, the excitable Canada geese, a crow bashing a nut against a rock and a cute squirrel. I aplologise for a second time that I have included so many photos in my slideshow but hope you enjoy them.
It was very cold as we walked around the park this morning (with a wind chill factor making it feel like -6 degrees) but it was a pleasant experience as it was sunny and there was lots of activity. Coots and Canada geese in particular were very agitated and very noisy as they are getting ready for breeding.
I haven’t seen grey herons there recently so it was rewarding to see the juvenile back and managing to catch some lunch.
We couldn’t face the crowds at the local park today and so my bird watching was restricted to half an hour in my garden.
I was pleased to add two new birds to my garden list (which I am working on – My Garden List) with a wren and a female black cap.
There was a lovely window of sunshine this morning and we risked the crowds at our local park. We were pleasantly surprised as there were fewer people than of late and most were adhering to social distancing rules; also the council (or volunteers?) had cleared the paths of mud.
We looked for kingfishers and dippers but, although everyone and his/her dog had seen them, we were unlucky. We were cheered by seeing long-tailed tits and hearing plenty of robins. Two swans were building a nest on kingfisher island and a cormorant was looking splendid in its breeding plumage.
There was a new addition to the lake and someone had floated a model Colosseum. Athens-on -sea maybe.
It seems that this recent addition is the work of The Bristol Duck Project
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.
