Well, we’ve experienced a mix of weather recently, haven’t we? Some beautiful days, but other rotten ones. On one of the former, I felt like stretching my legs, so I walked down to the River Tale, and on to Blue Anchor. Buzzards soaring high up in the blue sky, robins singing and there were some deer in a field in the distance—two or three of them.
On another lovely day, Margaret and I had booked a trip on the Stuart 
Line birdwatching boat, out of Exmouth and up the river Exe to Topsham. We saw all the usual birds one sees on the Exe in the Winter, including lots of avocets, mergansers and others. The highlight for me was seeing a pair of 
goosanders—lovely big ducks from the north and east. These birds don’t often come as far south west as Devon, but the very cold weather further north had pushed them down here. Incidentally, we saw another pair on the Otter river.
A bird we see more of in the winter, in the garden, is the long tailed tit.
We get them on most days, and they come in numbers, feeding on the nuts and seed. They are lovely little birds—black, white and a bit of pink, with, you guessed it, very long tails! On colder days, we see many more birds in the garden than on warmer days, including our regular tits, finches, sparrows and blackbirds. I put sliced apples out for the blackbirds, but they get stolen by our furry friends, the squirrels!
Alan Jones – 841671
