December has seen a good variety of birds visiting our garden. As well as the usual blue, great and coal tits, robin, dunnock and chaffinch, we have had regular visits from greenfinch, bullfinch and goldcrest.

More out of the ordinary, a treecreeper has been seen on two occasions and once a male blackcap visited the feeders. Blackcaps are summer visitors and migrate south in the autumn. However, some blackcaps that spend the summer in central Europe migrate to southern Britain for the winter and this was probably one of those.

Flocks of redwings and fieldfare are still evident and we’ve seen one or two feeding on apples in our garden. The nearest sighting to Badby so far of a waxwing was one in Woodford Halse just after Christmas.   RP