It's been a poor month for diary entries, but this is mainly due to the fact that we've been busy on tidying up the garden and have had very little time for anything else. There have been some exciting moments - like seeing a stoat on our patio - but there are no photos, no so diary entry.

Today we re-erected the bird perches in our meadows and saw this southern hawker basking on the autumnal bracken (which I thought I'd got under control!).

Walking around our front garden we saw this sprouting out of a crevice on our old plum. We think it is a sunflower sprouting from a seed that was probably placed there by one of our industrious nuthatches.

It was a beautiful autumn day today with clear blue skies. Perfect for bringing out the autumn colours.

A small group of song thrushes were hopping around in the grass opposite the house.

A flock of around 30 siskins landed in our birch today. Here's a photo of three of them.

We saw our first brambling of this autumn today. This is the earliest we've recorded a brambling - the previous earliest record was on the 8th October 2016. Coupled with a returning dunnock, we are seeing the start of the transition to winter.