Tuesday 21st January

After the weather being such a good day yesterday, well, today it went downhill rapidly, I even had to empty the rain guage out this morning as it was full, with over 5" of rain in so far for this month alone. Why do ducks have webbed feet, think we should possibly have webbed feet too... Fortunately I kept back some of Mary's sightings from last week. The highlights of a Farmland Birds survey carried out on Thursday included 31 Twite, 80 Chaffinch, 45 Skylark (individual birds rather than together), and a Golden Eagle being mobbed by a Buzzard up towards Ardnave. Friday was the day for the Winter Thrush Survey covering both the trails at Gruinart, the tally covered everything, not just Thrushes, so here are Mary's figures...24 Blackbird, 16 Redwing, 2 Fieldfare, 15 Robin, 5 Dunnocks, 3 Wren, 5 Roe Deer, 7 Greenfinch, 1 Treecreeper, 2 Great Tit, 1 Blue Tit, 9 Reed Bunting and 2 male Bullfinches. Thanks Mary. Yesterday, here at home there was a flock of 150 Twite fly past when I was up at Shepherd's cottage