Newcomers to the garden

I spent some time in the garden today finishing off my new wildlife pond before the heavy rain comes tomorrow. I took a few minutes breather and noticed movement in the apple tree by the feeders and saw a flash of yellow and black and straight away thought, was that a Siskin. I hoped it was as I had not had Siskin in the garden before, plenty in Hamstreet Woods but not here. I moved back a few yards and sure enough a Siskin came out of the tree and onto the Nyjer seeds. I rushed indoors and grabbed my camera hoping that it was still on the feeder and it was, along with another. I managed to get a few shots before the flew off. Then about 10 minutes later I saw a raptor flying over, grabbing my bins I could see it was a Buzzard, which is a new one for the year across the village, and shortly after that 2 Common Gulls flew over, another new bird for this year in the village, so an interesting half hour, now, where was I with this pond?

Change of plans due to the snow

I had planned to meet up with friends today in North East Kent but due to the snow I had no chance of getting out of the village.

So this led to firstly a bit of garden watching, and in an hour I had 3 new birds for the year with the appearance of around 30 Redwings, 2 Pied Wagtails and 2 Lapwings.

Then off to Hamstreet Woods for a 2 and half hour trudge around in the snow, which was quite hard work at times. At the entrance to the woods despite all the children on sledges it looked quite promising with many of the normal woodland birds, and more Redwings. However as I got further into the woods it changed and just died and birds were hard to come by. I did see Goldcrest, Treecreeper, Greater Spotted and Green Woodpecker. What I was pleased to see was the 6 Nuthatches throughout the walk, in the past couple of years Nuthatches had been hard to come by in the woods but now they seem to be making a comeback.