Just spent a pleasant 10 minutes watching three wood pigeons guzzling themselves on next door’s rowan berries. Steady on chaps, they’ve got to last all winter...

The BTO Garden Bird Watch data for the winter shows that the patterns of birds visiting gardens was much the same as in previous years but the overall numbers were down this winter. That certainly tallies with our experience submitting data to the birdwatch with the only entirely new species recorded in the garden over the winter being a sparrow hawk.

The only garden rarity we saw was a grey heron, doubtless plotting an attack on a neighbour’s fish pond.

Some lucky person had a raven in their garden!

Now that the thistle seeds are out one of the pleasures is watching the butterflies feed on them. Not many particularly rare species but the sheer number of small tortoiseshell (approx 30) bouncing around is delightful. They were joined by small whites, painted ladies and a couple of ringlets.