Hi there
Well, the weather has taken a distinct turn for the worse, hasn’t it? We’ve had our heating on and off for a few days now, and today it’s very cold and rainy.
The butterflies hate this cold weather, so they have disappeared from our garden. However, there are lots of birds feeding on the feeders. We have blue and great tits, and this morning there were two cole tits. These are charming, perky little birds, not much bigger than blue 
tits, and can be recognised by their black and white heads. Their habit is to arrive on the feeders, snatch a nut or seed, and fly away with it—they don’t hang around. We’ve also been visited by lots of young house sparrows, which have apparently largely disappeared from the towns and cities, but there’s no shortage of them round here.
Our apples have been falling from the trees for some time, partly due to our friends the birds pecking away at them. There was a blackbird helping himself to them this morning.
There are still some swallows and martins about here, but their numbers have declined quite a lot. This cold weather will send them on their way to Africa very soon.
Ray is happy—he thought he’d lost his spiky friend the hedgehog, who he hadn’t seen for a while, but yesterday, there was not one , but two of them coming to his garden to be fed.
They know he’s a soft touch!
