We've got some work about to start on our garden so we spent a long time this weekend moving snowdrops out of the way. Now that we've cleared a lot of the overgrown bits of the garden, the snowdrop display is fully visible. Once the garden work is completed, we'll try to move them back in so this display will get better and better from now on.

We've started to see some birds return to the garden after their winter break (presumably not that far away). This week we've seen black redstarts, starlings and dunnocks.

This robin was establishing his territory.

We put up our bird and bat boxes last week. Schwegler advertise this particular model of bird box as for nuthatches. Last year we had great tits in there, but this year, just maybe, we may be getting baby nuthatches again. He seems to be filling the box with rather hard materials. Not like the moss, fur and hair that the great tit preferred.

We had a black redstart in the garden today and heard him singing as well later on. This is a full two weeks ahead of our previous earliest record of a black redstart. 

A huge buzzard has been hanging around the valley this week. This photo shows a magpie along side him/her and shows the difference in size. This particular buzzard is truly a big bird.

We did a bit of clearing up in the garden today. There were a lot of broken branches to pick up.

One of the fallen apple tree branches was surrounded by poo. Presumably some animal was enjoying the buds. I originally thought this was deer poo, but my animal tracking book suggests hare.

We've seen a kingfisher down by the pond a couple of times this week. Up until today, the pond was almost completely frozen over so he only had a couple of places around the edge which he could hunt in. Today the ice has almost gone so he was having a bit more luck.