Christmas with family in a large Country House
For the last 3 days Dawn and I joined many of our family group at a large country residence where Celia (Dawn's sister) house-sits over the Christmas period.
Large gardens and extensive meadows, with a pond, surround the house which lies some 6 miles south of Yeovil, it is full of birds, many of which gather at the bird feeders which are busy all day long.
The common garden birds seen were:
1. Blue Tit
2. Great Tit
3. Coal Tit
4. Robin
5. Dunnock
6. Chaffinch
7. House Sparrow
these were joined on occasion by
8. Marsh Tit
9. Great Spotted Woodpecker
and
10. Eurasian Nuthatch.
During our three-day stay I took several walks across the meadows and amassed quite a long list of other species.
A solitary grebe sat on the pond:
11. Little Grebe
in the trees and hedges I saw 5 species of Thrushes:
12. Blackbird
13. Mistle Thrush (singing on the first day in the meadow)
14. Song Thrush (singing on the last morning in the garden)
15. Redwing
16. Fieldfare
many of the latter two species often flew over in groups of up to 50 individuals.
Other fly-over species included:
17. Rook
18. Carrion Crow
19. Jackdaw
20. Magpie
21. Wood Pigeon
22. Cormorant
23. Herring Gull
24. Black-headed Gull
Other hedgerow species appeared and after further searching, during the last day when the weather imporved, I found a few more:
25. Bullfinch (a small flock of 5 birds were eating newly form buds from a variety of bushes)
26. Goldfinch
27. Greenfinch
28. Wren (singing most days)
29. Common Buzzard
30. Pied Wagtail
31. Stock Dove (one bird calling distantly on the last day - but I could not locate it)
Not a bad tally for a single residence over three days!