No Place like Home

I start 2015 by not being at large, despite my deciding to challenge myself to see how many species of everything I could record in 2015. I had a cold just before Christmas which developed into a chest infection. This means my wildlife spotting is from my living room or my kitchen. It also means my getting some good practice for the Big Garden Birdwatch happening at the end of the month. I do tend to overlook the delights of the wildlife visiting my garden. This morning my alarm was the sound of about 200 jackdaws passing over my house on their way from their roost on Cuerden Valley Park. Often I get about 60 or so pausing in an alder in my front garden ensuring I don't stay in bed too long. Today as I looked through the window a winter scene opened up before me. I managed to persuade my daughter to change the ice in the drinking trough for clean water before re-filling the seed feeders. Above you can see one of my first visitors, a lovely male bullfinch. He was not alone for too long as my usual avian guests, robins, blue tits, great tits, chaffinches and coal tits came along to have their breakfast. A single wood pigeon was cautiously watched by two collared doves and when he moved off, they moved in. I have noted that since the collared doves started visiting, I have not had any magpies. Is this evidence of the former discouraging the latter? Two dunnocks flitted around under my small hazel trees, a couple of goldcrests were just visible in my neighbour's Leylandii and a wren exploded into song on our fence. The other noisy visitors were a couple of grey squirrels. Perhaps they were expressing dismay at the efficiency of the baffle I have on the bird feeder pole. Below you should be able to see what it looks like.  A single lesser black-backed gull flew high above my garden bringing an end to a rather enjoyable hour's nature watch.