I’m easily distracted and always have been, but also quite obsessive.\u00a0 Maybe an odd combination, but it seems to work for me.\u00a0 With an office window that looks over several allotments and gardens, as well as the 76ha of mixed woodland that is Choppington Woods Local Nature Reserve, I’m quite keen on keeping a close eye on what turns up in the garden…<\/p>\n
With the shaded areas of the garden still carrying a light veneer of frost, and a stiff southeasterly breeze cutting to the bone as I filled the feeders yesterday morning, a Common Buzzard<\/strong><\/em> soared overhead as the Coal Tits<\/strong><\/em> perched just a few feet above me, providing encouragement for me to hurry up and fill the feeders.\u00a0 As soon as I was back inside, the tree was a mass of excitement.\u00a0 Chaffinches<\/strong> <\/em>were dropping in from every direction and I settled to checking through the birds on the feeders, and on the ground below them, hoping that the Bramblings<\/strong> <\/em>we’ve had for the last few couple of months would be still around.\u00a0 What I found instead were visitors that were even more unusual in the context of our feeding station – 3 Lesser Redpolls<\/strong><\/em> were picking at fallen seed on the ground and a Goldcrest<\/strong> <\/em>was hurrying around the edges of the shrubbery nearby.\u00a0 The Redpolls<\/strong> <\/em>were just another episode in what has been an unusual winter in our garden; our first garden record of Marsh Tit<\/strong><\/em>, second record of Tree Sparrow<\/strong><\/em> (2 birds which have been with us every day for a few months now), third record of Nuthatch<\/strong><\/em>, the return of Willow Tit<\/strong><\/em> after nearly a two year absence, regular sightings of Brambling<\/strong> <\/em>and occasional Treecreeper<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong> have made this a winter where we really couldn’t predict what would be on the feeders whenever we checked them.<\/p>\n As I sat down to write this, I glanced out of the window and my eye immediately fell on seven bulky finches in our neighbour’s Silver Birch trees.\u00a0 As one of the birds was hanging upside down while feeding, lifting my binoculars only confirmed what I already knew; another infrequent visitor had put in an appearance this winter.\u00a0 I opened the window, and heard the metallic ‘chip-chip’ as the flock of Common Crossbills<\/strong><\/em> flew into the pines behind our house.\u00a0 Now, what was I meant to be doing ? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m easily distracted and always have been, but also quite obsessive.\u00a0 Maybe an odd combination, but it seems to work for me.\u00a0 With an office window that looks over several allotments and gardens, as well as the 76ha of mixed woodland that is Choppington Woods Local Nature Reserve, I’m quite keen on keeping a close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,98,5,139],"tags":[118,102,101,148,135,134,569,300,125,338,28],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-choppington-woods-northumberland","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-brambling","tag-chaffinch","tag-coal-tit","tag-common-buzzard","tag-goldcrest","tag-lesser-redpoll","tag-marsh-tit","tag-nuthatch","tag-tree-sparrow","tag-treecreeper","tag-willow-tit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1855,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions\/1855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}