After a slight delay..

Unfortunately nature activities have been suspended over the past month due to a bereavement followed by a loss of broadband connection, broken boiler and lengthy powercut in the wake of Storm Arwen.

As a result I've seen very little beyond what has turned up around the garden.  I only got out on one trip, a bike ride to Corbridge when, after seeing a single low-hovering kite early on, I spent some time peering into someone else's garden.  Apart from trying to transform a chaffinch into a brambling as someone once amusingly put it, there was nothing of any significance.  

There hasn't been that much in my garden anyway.  A couple of weeks back I glimpsed a queen wasp

Long-tailed tits

passing by the mahonia but no early bumblebees, which might have been a possibility.

I've spent some time thinking about the long-tailed tits and how gregarious and shy they are.  I moved the suet balls they obviously like onto the plum tree to see if they would come closer.  Apart from one occasion they didn't so I put them back near the fence and about six visited shortly afterwards.  It's a case of feast or famine though.

For a while a dunnock with no tail visited the bird table, moving uptypically slowly. The first time it even stayed there motionless for about an hour.  Presumably it had been attacked.

A wren has also visited on a couple of occasions.

My occasional visitors have sometimes noticed tawny owls calling from the trees by the stream.  I don't usually but there was one evening, quite early, when there was one calling from fairly close by.

A sighting of a furtive jay in the same area had me wondering if one would visit the garden again, but nothing so far.