BIRDS, FLOODS AND SHEEP (ONE)

I was counting the birds for the RSPB this morning. Then they all suddenly disappeared! Last year it was a Kestrel, this year I suspect Megatron the neighbour's black cat. Fortunately they came back and in addition to the usual we had our tree sparrows and a pair of bramblings.
The survey over, I am looking out of my window - there are long-tailed tits on the feeders and a greater-spotted woodpecker in the old ash tree! Such is life.

The snow has done its damage, (we had 15cm (Wow! Metric)), - snapped a branch off the Magnolia grandiflora, flattened a rhododendron (it will sprout again from the stump). It rained all night and it is above freezing and now we have floods again. Water, water everywhere and not an albatross in sight.

To top it all one big sheep has found our grass is greener and climbed over the wall in the far corner where the fence abuts up against it, managed to knock part of the wall down too. So, wellies on and out I go before breakfast with some barbed wire and do a temporary repair. However, sheep are resourceful and agile. I will not be at all surprised to see it back in the garden. At least it was on its own.

Despite the snow there is still some shape and colour in the garden. The miscanthus is blowing in the wind now but yesterday was heavy with the snow, the brown colours contrasting with the white.

I am still staying off the lawns as far as I can and definitely off the upper banking as the snowdrops are just coming out and the whole area is peppered with daffodil shoots.

Now I have just seen three female pheasants ambling up the woodland path!
Maybe they are here because of the peanuts - the damp had got into the feeders so I emptied the contents on the grass and refilled with fresh dry nuts.
Even if the birds do not take them the wood mice will be nipping out and carrying them off.

I searched the garden for tracks but apart from the bird trampled areas under the feeders nothing - except sheep. We have had a fox, rabbits and even bullocks in the past but today nothing. The voles have tunnels under the snow in the longer grass - a network of paths out of sight of predators.

Bullocks in a garden are a disaster - they trample everywhere leaving deep hoof marks for yours truly to fill in and seed.

Now the rooks have arrived.
Where were they an hour or so ago?

Sigh!

Oh! Yes - on my blogsite, darbishire@blogspot.co.uk, I now have a sign in facility in the top lefthand corner. Wonderful thing sons! There are 300 blogs on there!