The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch - a family affair

Want to get your kids/teens/reluctant partner involved in counting garden birds? Offer sneaky incentives. As well as stocking up with bird food for the survey hour, I always get in various treats for the rest of the family. I don't insist anyone joins me, but I keep the kitchen warm and have some comedy playing on the radio or iPod, and one by one they come and pick up the binoculars and start spotting. It's a very comfy way to birdwatch but the survey results are important so at the same time we feel we're doing a useful job. This year we had very few birds and only eight species. That doesn't matter, though. The RSPB needs all the records they can get hold of.

Our 2014 results?
5 jackdaws
1 coal tit
4 house sparrows
4 wood pigeons
2 blackbirds
2 robins
2 blue tits
1 dunnock

At Broughall Again

 Linnets

 Meadow pipit

 Reed bunting

 Water vole prints and droppings

Buzzard

Another walk round Broughall, and two personal firsts for me - the pipit and the linnets. Also, not being a birder, I had no idea you got flocks of reed buntings in fields. 

This area, as well as being home to water voles, is teeming with birds, which makes me think perhaps the farmland is organic.

Good Start to the New Year

Across the road from the lay-by at Broughall is a public footpath across fields. Took a walk across there this afternoon and came across a ditch with water vole prints all over the banks plus this latrine. It's a new colony to me, and one I'll be happily keeping an eye on this summer.

Goodbye to 2013

 Snug

 The ditch by Grocontinental as it looks this month

 Trackway leading through the reeds to the water

Various water vole footprints: at Grocontinental, in the field off Edgeley Road (see extreme bottom right of photo) and some from last Feb to show the clear starry shape of the paws.

There's very little doing vole-wise this month - I don't expect to see any real activity till February or March - but there's clearly still water vole presence in the two fields off Edgeley Road. W-vole paw prints are very similar to rat so I would be cautious about claiming any of these photos were definitive proof. However, I have found them in areas where there were lots of voles in the summer and autumn, and they do look pretty star-shaped to me.

Feeding Up

Rescue-hog is still up and eating his way through two pouches of cat food a day. At 817g he can safely hibernate - he just doesn't want to! 

If you have room in your shed/garage to over-winter a hog, call your local wildlife rescue centre and ask if they have any they need farming out. The centres I know of are all overwhelmed and would really appreciate the help.

Into Hibernation (for those UK mammals which hibernate)

 "Oh, is that for me?"

The hog I got via Lorcan from West Midlands Hedgehog Rescue centre is now fat enough to attempt hibernation, so he's going in the shed. Hedgehogs have to be over 650g to make it through the winter, so if you see a small one, please grab it and contain it and ring St Tiggywinkles for help.

Hooray for the EA

Huge hedgehog who is currently visiting our garden.

Super email from the Environment Agency outlining several options for the management of next year's strimming. It is really encouraging that they have listened and taken our concerns on board.