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Christmas with family in a large Country House

For the last 3 days Dawn and I joined many of our family group at a large country residence where Celia (Dawn's sister) house-sits over the Christmas period. 

Large gardens and extensive meadows, with a pond, surround the house which lies some 6 miles south of Yeovil, it is full of birds, many of which gather at the bird feeders which are busy all day long.

The common garden birds seen were:

1. Blue Tit

2. Great Tit

3. Coal Tit

4. Robin

5. Dunnock

6. Chaffinch

7. House Sparrow

these were joined on occasion by

8. Marsh Tit

9. Great Spotted Woodpecker

and

10. Eurasian Nuthatch.

During our three-day stay I took several walks across the meadows and amassed quite a long list of other species.

A solitary grebe sat on the pond:

11. Little Grebe

in the trees and hedges I saw 5 species of Thrushes:

12. Blackbird

13. Mistle Thrush (singing on the first day in the meadow)

14. Song Thrush (singing on the last morning in the garden)

15. Redwing

16. Fieldfare

many of the latter two species often flew over in groups of up to 50 individuals.

Other fly-over species included:

17. Rook

18. Carrion Crow

19. Jackdaw

20. Magpie

21. Wood Pigeon

22. Cormorant

23. Herring Gull

24. Black-headed Gull

Other hedgerow species appeared and after further searching, during the last day when the weather imporved, I found a few more:

25. Bullfinch (a small flock of 5 birds were eating newly form buds from a variety of bushes)

26. Goldfinch

27. Greenfinch

28. Wren (singing most days)

29. Common Buzzard

30. Pied Wagtail

31. Stock Dove (one bird calling distantly on the last day - but I could not locate it)

Not a bad tally for a single residence over three days!