The Feeding Station

When we got home from bellringing this morning there was a message on the bellringing band's Twitter feed. It was a lady who lives round the corner from the church. She said how much she enjoyed listening to our ringing on a Sunday morning and on our Thursday evening practice nights. She went on to say that listening to the bells was one of the things that she most liked about living in the village and what a positive effect they had on her feeling of wellbeing. As you can imagine we were delighted to receive this feedback particularly as we are very inexperienced bellringers.

This afternoon we set out, with our sandwiches and flask as well as a caramel wafer, for the nature reserve. We took up our position at the Feeding Station hide. It was busy with Blue Tits, Great Tits and Long-tailed Tits and chaffinches. We also spotted a nuthatch, a reed bunting and a woodpecker. A young family joined us in the hide. They had a sheet with pictures of birds and were marking them off for a school project. They hadn't been in the hide many minutes when a Sparrowhawk swooped in and perched on a branch a few feet away affording us a great view. This of course caused all the other birds to disappear. After a minute or so the sparrowhawk flew off. I think that we were more excited than the children.