Snow Means Slow Start

17 days into the year and I have barely had time to catch my breath. It has certainly been an interesting start to the year for many of our birds with the cold weather and prolonged snow cover on the ground having a huge impact. Many of our local breeding birds have long since departed south, even those that would normally be sedentary and not move have legged it down to the south coast and maybe even over into France. The result is that many of our woodlands and hedgerows are now very quiet. The remaining birds including many immigrants from Scandanavia have had a tough time, so as you may have read in Saturday's Journal I've been involved in an initiative called 'Bird Aid' bringing together three of the region's Bird Clubs in a supplementary feeding programme for Farmland Birds such as that frozen looking Skylark above.
We've had a great response from volunteers and have secured 3 tonnes of Wheat, some of which is already out feeding large flocks of Yellowhammer and Finches at sites in Northumberland & Durham.
For me personally the snow has led to a large number of unusual species making their home in my back garden for the past few weeks, we've never been busier!
From Fieldfares & Redwing tackling the local Blackbirds over our Apples to big fat Woodpigeon mingling with our very own flock (well ten) of Yellowhammer it has been a great time to watch garden birds. We also have a little flock of Brambling building up, a beautiful finch that is a winter visitor from Europe but I'll tell you more about them in my next post, for now a belated Happy New Year and keep feeding the birds.