It snowed during the day - quite a surprise given the weather recently - luckily we've just had the winter tyres put on!

I'd heard a green woodpecker in the valley for the past week or so. Today he was down by the pond, drinking.

It seems the mild weather has allowed a few birds to stay longer than normal. Today we saw a blackcap and a chiffchaff. These would normally have migrated by now.

We spent another few weeks away so the diary has been neglected.

The birds are slowly returning to the bird tables. There's a large flock of siskins flying around the valley and we've already seen our first bramblings of this Autumn. This isn't quite the earliest we've seen bramblings as we have records from the 8th October in 2016, but it is still quite early.

The weather is unbelievably mild and dry. The pond is very low.