Beautiful silent morning

Snow overnight as predicted but I didn't believe it until the children started jumping up and down. Set off on my bike to work at 8, carefully making may way down the back road past Whitley farm. Silent, still and sunny. Road treacherous so I stuck to the new snow in the middle where I had at least some traction. Low bright sun with pristine white carpet covered in rabbit tracks and fields dotted with rooks picking at the ground in gangs. College closed at lunchtime as snowing heavily all morning and as we had a snowball fight in the village great sweeping clouds of starlings made their way back from feeding. A number of starlings find their way into the chicken run and are uncatchable but find their way out eventually, many of the little birds are making full use of the chicken and duck food in the cold weather. They are not alone as the mice have gnawed their way into the food sacks in the shed and I covered half the floor with trailing chick crumbs from the holes as I moved the bags this afternoon hunting for our lost wooden sledge. More snow predicted tonight and it all feels very seasonal with the fire roaring.

Winter will leave us...

As you can see from this morning's photo, we are snowbound once more. The strong sunshine with background of sky and snow combines for excellent birding.

In the hedge this morning the first Fieldfare I've seen here, gobbling down the last haw berries - in common with other thrushes they are voracious snafflers, and they wolf down berry after berry with what seems like greed. I suppose with this weather they need to feed well whenever possible.

A charm of goldfinches overhead is always a delightful sight and the 20 or so this morning scattered colour over the sky, while two blue tits hung upside-down from a telephone line, pecking at it. Seeing this behaviour in the past I have assumed they are gaining minerals off it, or conceivably small insects.

The Sun returns

I finally manage to access the blog and can begin contributions from the 'West Country'. Duncan

Walk out into the village this afternoon, with the children on bikes, to photograph the church for a drawing. Stopped to regroup in the winter sunshine by Ashcott farm and watched the dairy cattle steaming in their yard. The thousands of starlings, that mass in bands across Somerset at this time of year, were all sitting in their hundreds along the food trough rails ambivalent to the periodic bangs of the bird scarers. In the trees above the graveyard their chatter almost drowned out conversation until as one they were silent and threw themselves into the sky in pursuit of some other diversion. By 3.30 pm they are sweeping overhead in massed bands heading for the reedbeds down on the levels at Mere and Shapwick Heath, their swoosh of wings your first warning. Moon high in the autumn afternoon sky, ice still on the pond although water sitting on top again now. Saw a fox last night in the village standing stock still in the road to look at me before slipping into a hedge, will our ducks make it to Christmas as they insist on sleeping on the ice and not in their duck house?

The dust of snow

As we slide into winter, the last fortnight's snow has not transfigured the landscape so significantly that it is a new one; it is more a decoration of a known one. Some impressions:

• Robins squabbling in mid-air
• A mouse, trapped and set in ice in a watering can
• The pulsing of a barn owl over the top field
• Red sentinel crab apples, glistening in frosty morning sunshine

Sparrowhawk

As a youngster, I was very taken with the surname of the main protagonist of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea novels, 'Sparrowhawk', though I had never actually seen the real thing, until this weekend. Actually it's no suprise that as a suburban child of the 80s I had not done so, as they were still recovering from a massive post-war population slump due mainly to agro-chemicals. This weekend, though, I had my first definite view of one; on saturday morning we were enjoying a cup of tea in bed, looking out at the comings and goings of tits, finches, robins and blackbirds to and from hedges and birdfeeders, when this cheery scene of bucolic charm exploded in speed and feathers. A pigeon was taken in mid-flight by a shattering blow from above, and all I could say was that the assailant was quick, orange and deadly. By the time I got downstairs, the lawn was a mess of feathers, and the hedges quiet.

I would still have had doubts about my identification, had not on Sunday morning a sparrowhawk flown through our garden gate and alighted halfway down the garden, scanning the scene of yesterday's slaughter. Larger, darker and more lethal looking than I had ever gleaned from film, this was a magnificent female, who clearly has worked out that we have opened a fine raptor dining experience through our courting of garden birds. If Ms LeGuin's character was in any way meant to resemble his namesake, she must have intended him to be most forbidding. I must admit to being quite excited by the presence of this species locally, and I hope to see more of the bird. I just hope that I can be as well-disposed should it choose robin over pigeon!

Halcyon day

A dreach sort of a day, with squally showers driven through by a northerly, but we decided to head to Wheatfen to combat cabin fever anyway. Joyously, our recent luck with immediate sightings on arrival at hides continued with a scintillating display from a large-ish male kingfisher. The dart of blue across the old mill pond by the thatch signalled the start of a command performance; hovering, fishing, preening, cleaning and circling the pond showed the consumate command of aerobatics from this little fighter pilot.

I've seen them before - they are reasonably easy to spot on the broads, especially from river level - but this was comfortably the most prolonged sighting I've enjoyed. For several minutes it sat low on a reed stem, scanning the water for prey, before hovering for a moment triangulating the line of attack, wings a-blur, then arrowing directly onto a small fish which it wold then return to enjoy on its perch. With the martins and swallows now gone (it's been a fortnight since I last saw any here) this creature of sunshine and gentle zephyrs seemed out of place in grey, windy autumnal dusk, but was no less welcome for that.

Twice Shy

Having not been there for maybe 15 years, I was very happy to return on a warm autumn day to the gem of Strumpshaw Fen. Although as the crow flies it is a mere 3 miles from us, the intervening River Yare means a 20 mile round trip via bike and ferry. The journey was more than justified, however, when within literally seconds of arrival I saw my first ever Bittern. Having never seen one despite bird-watching in Norfolk since a boy and having heard how rare and difficult to see they are, this seemed laughably easy; no hours of waiting, cold and cramped in a hide or reed-bed to glimpse indstinct brown feathers between brown reeds, it simply flapped across in front of us, nonchalantly and in full view, before perching atop the reeds. It stayed there for a good twenty minutes, periodically stretching up its thick neck as if to sun itself, so that we could have no doubt of the identification; unmistakably a Bittern. Apparently such sightings are now not uncommon at Strumpshaw, owing to the reed bed management that ensures ideal habitat, but it still felt exciting and a special moment.

Above the reed beds, a flock of rooks mobbed a Marsh Harrier. This would hitherto have been a highlight, but as we now see Marsh Harriers quite regularly, lazily hunting over arable fields and at Wheatfen, it went almost uncommented. In fact, these are often probably the same birds as can be seen at Strumpshaw, the river being no barrier to them, making either side of the river one territory from the proverbial birds-eye view. So now, when will I see a Bittern south of the Yare...?