How different it is

We have just spent Christmas with family on the south coast near Portsmouth for a few days. Spending some time in my Grandma's garden on Boxing Day just made me think how different it is there, compared to how it is in our own garden in Buckinghamshire...

One thing that wasn't to be seen on the south coast was snow- something that has been around in our garden for about a week now. Much of the rest of the UK has also had heavy snowfall (by our standards anyway) over the last two weeks or so. So, without the snow, plants were much easier to see in the garden. Surprisingly, there is still plenty of colour to be seen in the south coast garden, even at this time of year.

The berries in the photo above really brightened up the border of the garden by the hedge. They were growing on small shrubs, in little clusters. The photos in this posting have all been taken using Mum's DSLR camera (Canon 450D). I have noticed that this camera is much more able to take good close-up shots of plants, but, because the zoom on the lens isn't great, I tend to use my own "point and shoot" camera to take photos of birds, etc.

Some lichens which varied in colour on a stone bird bath in the garden caught my attention too...

I was also surprised to see some tomato-like fruits growing on a small green shrub in the garden. Again, not sure of the name (I'm still useless with identifying plants).

Whilst the south coast garden is much more colourful at this time of year, I would say that our garden is getting more bird visitors. We take part in the BTO Garden Birdwatch scheme, which, in case you aren't aware, is a weekly survey of the birds which visit your garden every week. We have been doing this for a few years now, although I must admit that we are fairly infrequent in entering our counts to the BTO website. Anyway, I was truly amazed at how many new species we saw in our garden on the week starting 20/12/09. Here is our list for that week (a total of 23 species):

Blackbird (1)

Chaffinch (3)

Dunnock (2)

Great Spotted Woodpecker (1)

House Sparrow (4)

Magpie (2)

Starling (5)

Blackcap (2)

Bullfinch (1)

Coal Tit (1)

Great Tit (2)

Woodpigeon (4)

Blue Tit (5)

Carrion Crow (1)

Collared Dove (2)

Goldfinch (5)

Greenfinch (4)

Long-Tailed Tit (2)

Wren (1)

Red Kite (1)

Feral Pigeon (1)

Redwing (2)

Robin (2)

However, even though we have had lots of new visitors in our garden, we aren't getting any nest box visitors, which is something that I did see in the south coast garden. A Blue Tit pair were very interested in a nest box on a wall in the garden for a good time. The birds in our garden aren't paired up yet, apart from the Great Tits although they are all being very territorial.

I may be able to get out tomorrow morning and watch our garden birds, so that I can share some photos with you, just to show what life is like in our garden at the moment. Anyway, enough from me, I hope you all had a very good Christmas, and enjoy the bank holiday!