The blog had a massive amount of 'traffic" yesterday, the second largest amount of visitors in one day, very encouraging. As the months go by the blog becomes more and more popular.  Also, I am pleased and excited to announce that I have an article published this month in Devon Life magazine. It is has been beautifully set up by the design team and shows very well with a piece about the Kingfishers on the brook and lots of pictures, very pleasing and I hope to do more. The weather remains glorious after a wet night, don't know as yet how it will have affected my hide and the brook as I decided to give myself a lie in this morning, but I will check later. We have a bright, intense blue sky and as we all know, England is a lovely country when the sun shines and in the Autumn and winter, that's not often enough.

The garden is starting to attract some birdlife at last, even the Sparrowhawk which took a Blue Tit from the Holly bush on Thursday, has not had the usual impact. We have had mostly Blue and Coal Tits as well as female Chaffinch and a small flock of Goldfinch.  A Robin comes and goes and also a Dunnock is now present…….. back to normal at last.  We have the Collared Doves back and Blackbirds of both sexes. Waiting now for the first Blackcap Warblers to arrive but we are still just a few weeks early, the earliest sighting in previous years was November 16th, so not too long to wait.

The top pictures show a Coal Tit, they feed by grabbing a morsel of food quickly and then they leave as fast as they can.  Consequently, they are hard to photograph but rewarding as I find them very pretty. They are very small by the way, smaller than Blue Tits and weigh about 8 to 10 grams.  They are more common in gardens than they were formally and I can't remember seeing them in the garden ten years ago for example.  They are  amongst the most common birds that we have in the garden now and I love to see them, if that makes me weird then I am happy to be weird!

Have you noticed the flag counter on the blog?  It is fascinating to see where my visitors come from. I am really excited to say that the latest new country to visit is a reader from Belize.  I have visited Belize six times and it is one of my most favourite destinations with wonderful bird life, jungles and above all, people. It will be sad if I never go there again.