Rainfall: 405.1mm

Temp High: 12.5^oC on 1st

Temp Low: -4.9^oC on 30th

Temp Average: 3.8^oC 

I saw a couple of great cormorants flying over the house today. I had enough time to grab my camera, but I didn't have enough time to set it up properly, so the photos were a bit shaky.

I've not recorded a chiffchaff so late in the year before. This one was hopping about in our bird cherry.

I wasn't expecting to record any new insect species for the garden, so late in the year, but this beetle, Phosphuga atrata, was sitting on our front door today.

Beside the beetle on the house wall were a couple of these long, thin flies. I've seen them many times, but haven't really paid much attention to them as they're fairly inconspicuous, but today I took a photo and I've ID'd it as the late needle fly, Leuctra fusca.

In the afternoon, we had a middle spotted woodpecker on one of our peanut feeders. We haven't seen one of these for several years.

This song thrush was hopping about outside my office window today looking for slugs and snails.

All the photos today are low-quality as they were taken through windows so as not to frighten the subjects away.

We've never seen blackbirds eating rosehips before. We'd always assumed that they were too big. We've seen a few blackbirds recently swallowing them whole.

Today we also saw two black redstarts, the latest we've ever seen them in the year.

Lastly, we had a small group of long-tailed tits at around the garden today and in the group was this white-headed individual. Not sure if this is an aberration or an example of a northern long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus caudatus.

There were another couple of parasol mushrooms near the house today. We got some close-up photos this time with Christine's hand for scale. These are a bit less fresh than the one I saw at the end of October.