Stock Dove

On Valentine's Day the garden was full of birds, busily feeding, chasing each other in a frisky way and taking part in minor territorial battles. Although it was cold and grey, all this activity certainly made it feel as though spring's not too far away. Just two weeks ago, during the Big Garden Birdwatch, I struggled to record three blue tits, but this afternoon I lost count of them, as they busily flitted among the trees and shrubs. We were also visited by a lovely pair of long-tailed tits picking over the vegetation for small insects.

But my favourite bird of the day was this stock dove - one of the most elegant members of the pigeon family, with beautiful green and violet iridescence on the neck patch. There's a thriving colony in Thorpe Hall, which is just a short way from our house, but we don't usually see them in the garden until late winter, when other food is running out. This one was heading to one of our ponds for a drink, but also spent some time under a feeder, picking up all the fragments of sunflower seed dropped by the wasteful goldfinches.

In other news, I made a second batch of marmalade as the first was so successful and was disappearing alarmingly fast!