We saw a Green Woodpecker in the front garden yesterday morning. It’s not the first one I have ever seen, but I have never seen such a bold one. Normally they seem to be shy birds. This one was quite happily exploring our front lawn for about 10 minutes or so and was quite oblivious of the occasional passer by. A nice start to the weekend.

On the subject of birds, when we arrived we went to a local garden shop and bought a small plastic container of nuts. I hung it in one of the trees and within 10 minutes some finches had found it. Since then, the word has obviously spread and now it is quite common to see 15 birds squabbling around the nuts. Greenfinches, Chaffinches, Bullfinches, Blue and Great Tits are the ones I can identify. Boy, can they scoff. We have been here for 5 weeks or so, and already we are on our third tube of nuts.

I feel a little sorry for our resident Robin. He (or She) can’t take the nuts from the feeder (I am not even sure if Robins eat nuts) and he spends his time sat on a branch just watching the action.

I am thinking about buying a bird table for him and the other non nut eaters. More on that if it happens.

Last week, Darling Wife took some old swede to the park for the gulls that are spending their winter vacation there. There about 50 Black Headed Gulls in residence and they are obviously quite streetwise as they were circling eagerly overhead before Joanna emptied the swede on to the grass. Having dutifully dumped the vegetables Darling Wife was then forced to retreat hastily as the gulls descended as one. They took about a minute to devour the lot.

There was similar carnage down on the river today. We had lunch in Windsor and then went and sat by the river for a few minutes. It was quite pleasant, cold but not excessively so. We tried to feed the Geese and Swans but of course the Gulls gate-crashed the party. They are incredibly agile, and whenever a piece of bread was thrown into the air, a Gull always caught it before it hit the water.

Some of the Geese got bored with seeing their lunch being intercepted and so decided to hop up onto the bank and come and get the food themselves. One particularly large brute began impatiently pecking at me and very nearly got himself booted back into the river for his pains.

As you might expect, Darling Wife thought this was all jolly good fun. It must be noted however that she stayed well away from the action at all times.