Thanks to everyone who took part in our pre-Christmas competition - Who's hiding under Santa's hat.

Jenny Osborne was the lucky winner of a Country Barn bird table worth £79.99 from our online shop. Just in time for Big Garden Birdwatch! Jenny correctly identified our five birds hiding under Santa's hat. And here they are, without their festive headgear:

Mystery bird 1

Mystery bird number 1 is, of…

It just wouldn't be Christmas without a quiz, would it?

We've got five pictures below, all you need to do is work out who is hiding under Santa's hat. When you have send us an email to enews@rspb.org.uk by 9 January with your five answers and we'll enter you into a prize draw to win a bird table from our shop, worth £79.99! Full terms and conditions are at the bottom of the page.

Good luck!

Tiny. Minute. Small.

Describe its size how you will, but goldcrests pull in a crowd. I was helping out at a bird ringing demonstration this weekend, and the goldcrests were the star attraction.

For some of the satisfied punters it was the first time they'd seen a goldcrest, let alone up so close. They vie with firecrests for the UK's smallest bird and the ones we caught weighed in at around five grams.

Five…

Pitchoo! Pitchoo!

That's the call of the marsh tit, the star of this week's Monday magic moment. It looks very, very similar to its relative, the willow tit, but the marsh tit's sneezing call can be a giveaway clue to its identity.

At this time of year, marsh tits and other woodland birds are making the most of the seeds and nuts on offer. Marsh tits' brains are specially developed to help them remember…

With yesterday being Remembrance Sunday, I thought it was the perfect time to find a picture of some poppies.

Whilst we pause to remember all those who have lost their lives, this farmland scene might make us remember the wildlife we've lost from our countryside too.

I was out on farmland yesterday, enjoying the late autumn sunshine at Hope Farm, the RSPB's arable farm in Cambridgeshire. There weren't any poppies…

One of the other great autumn-winter spectacles is the sight of a seething cloud of starlings appearing in the early evening around a roosting spot, known as a murmuration. 

If you can't visualise what I'm talking about you might remember a Carling advert from almost ten years ago that used the gathering evening starlings as a metaphor for going out on the town with your mates.

I'm lucky enough to live near one…

Did you see Life Story on BBC1 last week? The cliff-jumping barnacle goslings were unforgettable (if you missed it, you can catch up on iPlayer)!

Those geese were filmed on their mountainous breeding grounds in Greenland. Barnacle geese from Greenland migrate to spend winter with us in western Scotland, including on Islay where this photo was taken.

And birds which come from Svalbard - an island far to the north of…

Happy Monday!

Autumn really seemed to arrive over the last week. Yes it's still warm in my part of the world, but the ground is covered in golden leaves, I saw my first brent geese of the autumn and fungi are popping up here, there and everywhere.

Now, I'm no fungi expert. But even I can identify this little beauty. It's almost certainly what you'd describe if asked to tell someone what a toadstool looks like. It…

What's the best thing about autumn? Bonfire night? A lie-in on 26 Oct? It's got to be that visual feast of autumn colours hasn't it?

The beautiful reds, oranges and yellows that we see on broadleaf trees in mid autumn. 

The conditions needed to make really good autumn leaf colour are dry cold days with lots of sunshine, so we're not off to a great start.

But we can keep our fingers crossed that the weather…

Here at The Lodge today it's pretty wet, cold and generally unpleasant outside.

But however wet it is where you are, you're probably not quite as damp as this red deer hind. Her calf doesn't look too impressed, either...

Find more beautiful photos like this at RSPB Images.

As September slips into October our insects are shutting up shop until next spring.

Not all of them though. Attempting to match the autumn colours, male common darters are still patrolling the air. I spotted a couple at the weekend - have you seen any of these or any other insects recently?

Here's a photo of the male, females are a much more sedate greeny-brown. They're one of the last species of dragonfly still flying…

I walked for miles down a stream in the Lake District the other day, a journey that surely merited an encounter with one of my favorite birds, the dipper. 

But as nature is inclined to do sometimes it left me wanting, so I delved into RSPB-images today to take a digital look at what I missed out on in real life. 

This brave little soul is perched on the edge of what must seem like a raging waterfall to a creature this…

I've got a question for you.

Have you ever walked through a meadow, and seen a small brown bird erupt out of the grass in front of you and fly off? Yes? Well that happened to me a lot yesterday.

I was out at Orfordness - a shingly slice of Suffolk's varied coastline. A former cold war nuclear testing site, it's long since been abandoned to nature. In amongst the rusting metal, sprawling brambles and shifting sands…

When out for an after work jog on my local nature reserve, Fen Drayton, I was treated to the sight of a ghostly white face floating silently over the fields. 

It was of course a barn owl and it was great to see this beautiful animal hunting so close to where I live.

The spectacle lasted about half an hour and I watched it successfully dispatch a large mouse and then sit on a post devouring it. The experience was well…

Can you do this with a blackberry? 

Our hedgerows are laden with fruit, especially blackberries, and it's not just humans who are making the most of the crop. Birds like starlings love blackberries too, so watch out for flocks roaming the countryside in search of food. 

(you can tell this bird is a youngster because of its tell-tale brown head, though it's grown the rest of its smart, spotty 'adult' feathers)…

How was your long weekend?

Saturday and Sunday were good  for me, whilst Monday was seriously damp in my neck of the woods. So I thought a splash of colour could cheer you up on another wet day. And I hope you won't mind if it's dry where you are!

Here's a jay looking like it has mastered the art of levitation. Not for it flying down to the ground and picking up acorns! It certainly brought a smile to my…

Today for some unknown reason I felt like writing a post featuring our most charismatic tree dwelling rodent, the red squirrel.

Precariously balanced and clinging onto the edge, this picture seemed like a metaphor for the whole species (and lots of other wildlife for that matter).

But obviously it's also a very nice picture. Another cracking job for rspb-images.com by Steve Knell.

For frogs, the recent weekend of cloud and rain was probably quite pleasant, provided they weren't washed away! But when things dry out even small garden water features can be a lifeline to amphibians, not to mention somewhere for thirsty birds to have a drink. 

I really like this small but effective garden water feature, it merges seamlessly with its surroundings. A new water feature can settle in remarkably quickly…

Have you seen a hen harrier? These beautiful birds of prey breed in upland areas, but in England, none were successful last year, and this year only three pairs have bred.

There's enough habitat for 300 pairs - something is very wrong, and there's compelling evidence that it's persecution which is stopping the hen harrier's recovery in England.

We're raising money for hen harrier conservation. With…

Phew, what a scorcher!

The weekend was certainly glorious in my neck of the woods. I was looking for a nice yellow picture in homage to the end of the Tour de France yesterday. So I thought I'd bring a little ray of sunshine with this sunflower. Happy Monday!

This is one of thousands of images from RSPB Images - our online picture library. Take a look and bring some sunshine into your life!

The yellow on the golden oriole hits you and straight away and makes you think: that's way too bright for the UK, it would stick out like a sore thumb among our usually more (ahem) subtly coloured birds.  

But for the privileged few that live in or visit the right bits of England you might get to see one of these almost luminous males in the summer. Oddly enough they are actually quite secretive and difficult to see…

The unmistakable diamond-back pattern of the adder is a wonderful thing to behold. But even if you're a fan of these reptiles, when you see one there's still a part of your brain that remembers with a jolt: 'that thing's poisonous!'.

With it being the only member of the viper family in the UK, and among very few venomous creatures in the British Isles, it presents an unusual encounter for most of us…

July always brings a smile to my face.

Okay, we're not there just yet, but my birthday is in July and  I always think of lazy, hot summer days and the insects take over. It perhaps wasn't the most summery of weekends - plenty of rain here anyway.

So here's a lovely summer meadow shot that will help you forget about the damp weekend and get you in the mood for July!

This image was taken by Sue Kennedy and…

Contrary to popular belief, moths don't only come out at night. This beauty is a hummingbird hawkmoth, a migratory species which flies during the day - and now is a great time to see one, almost anywhere.

And, appropriately enough, it's National Insect Week!

Our friends at Butterfly Conservation are running a survey at the moment, and their moth map is packed with sightings of 'hummers', from Aberdeenshire…

Believe it or not, these are all UK species.

Admittedly ones you’re unlikely to see in your local area, unless you live in St Helena, the Falkland Islands or Montserrat. You see, these species call the remote UK Overseas Territories home.

We’ve just undertaken a stocktake of our overseas nature so I thought it was high-time that some of these species got the limelight they deserved.

Last year I did the…