it's been a busy few days for me since my last post on Saturday. The weather has not been conducive to good photos and birdwaqtching and with my forthcoming trip to Florida I had a few business loose ends to tie up. My Birdwatching has centred on just casual glances around the garden and the odd photo opportunity from the bathroom. In addition I have been trying to sort out the resolution issues with the pictures on the blog. I always like to post as big a picture as possible on the site but at times if you are viewing on a PC then the pixel size of the displayed image makes it impossible to see the full image. This has now been resolved and from now on you will not see pictures with the right hand side cropped off,. Well at least I hope so. Thanks to my good friend Bryony who has sorted that out for me. Incidentally I work from Mac but have recently brought a Toshiba PC Notepad to enable me to post from abroad. I am rapidly learning the idiosyncrasies of the PC system! The Sparrow posted here today and the Collared Dove is really all about a test to check that things are now sorted. This afternoon I am off to see if I can find the Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers at Dunster so please check back later for an up-date.

You have to admit that the eye of a Collared Dove is a smashing feature of this bird. This one is one of a pair that use my garden as their own and have well and truly paired up now. I suspect that it is the same birds that bred in the garden last year and successfully reared chicks ………squabs…. the proper name for young pigeons.
On Saturday 6th, in the afternoon the Blackcap Warbler was seen in the garden.

Update at 1915s. This afternoon was not in the least bit fruitful as far as Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers were concerned. This was  made all the more frustrating by reports from two seperate  birdwatchers who I met on my walk down the river. They both told me that they had had good views earlier on. I stood for at least an hour trying to get a look. I heard a few interesting calls and there was a bit of activity from tits including Marsh and Long-tail but no Woodpeckers unfortunately.