A huge Thank You to those wonderful ladies at Knitting Nan's once again.

They have very kindly made a donation of a superb £100 raised from selling their knitted good - this is extra welcome as we urgently need to get out this weekend to stock up on food supplies for our feeding stations, as some of them are needing replenishing 3x daily in the current snowy weather.

It has been lovely this year to see so many of the 'regular faces' back again this winter; Alfred the wood pigeon had been absent for a number of weeks and we were wondering if his time had come - but no, he was back again at lunchtime yesterday with a load of his pals for their top-up.

Regulars now include 30+ jackdaws, our resident crows and jays, numerous robins, wrens, dunnocks, house sparrows, blackbirds, song & mistle thrushes, a variety of tits, and delightfully two pairs of nuthatches. Alas we also have the odd sparrowhawk and buzzard passing through, but thankfully they tend to dine elsewhere, as do the pair of ravens who often fly overhead.

The herons continue to fish in the ponds when not frozen over, though in reality they will be frogging rather than fishing down there. Despite being so close to the heronry, there do still seem to be plenty of amphibians in the reserve ponds, so they must co-exist quite well. Sanctuary for all!

Nigel