With the cold weather the garden, the feeders and the wild bird cover along the Tower Pool Path are becoming full of small birds and on a good day we can see a dozen different species on or under the feeders. Along with the usual goldfinch, greenfinch, chaffinch, tree sparrow, dunnock and various tits we sometimes get something a bit more unusal. This week our best visitor has been this very smart male Brambling. Sadly the picture was taken through our not very clean office window, but in the flesh he's a very handsome black and peachy-orange bird and really stands out from the pink chaffinches.
Today Emma and the volunteers were out surveying the small birds around the centre and on the farmland between the centre and Tower Pool hide. The highlight of the count was a pair of snow bunting in the hedge just behind one of our farm buildings, one of which was later glimpsed in the wildlife garden. There were lots of other species around, including linnet, corn bunting and plenty of reed bunting like the one below (taken the garden today). A couple of our reserve's top predators were out and about as well, with a short-eared owl in the field by the entrance track and a weasel (smaller and faster than our more common stoats) dispatching a rabbit ten times its size just outside the wildlife garden.