January

Andy has joined the 365 Project - you document your life by taking a photograph each day for a year.  This is going to be very useful for me as I 'borrow' his pictures for this blog.

Saturday was warm and sunny and he joined me in the garden to photograph the snowdrops.  A lot of ours are out already.  I've made a note of the Easton Walled Garden Snowdrop Week (16th - 24th February) and I went to the NGS website to check the dates for others ... that's when I found the App!  I now have the Yellow Book on my phone!  Isn't technology wonderful!  We have information at our fingertips: we can communicate with family and friends at the touch of a button.  I know it can intrude at times but we are in control so we can switch it off.  There's a lot of lonely old people out there from my mother's generation but I'm convinced my generation won't feel quite so isolated as we blog and tweet from our nursing homes!

Anyway, if you want to note down the dates of the Snowdrop Weeks in your area you can find the dates here.http://www.ngs.org.uk/news-features/features/snowdrop-garden-openings.aspx

In the mean time I have uploaded that snowdrop picture to the Jane Greenoff Cross Stitch Gold program and it came out looking like this:-




I've put the chart on the Craft page (see tab at top) ... sorry it's not very good, I will try to produce a better copy in the next few days!








Another date for your diary is coming up - 26th - 27th January is the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch.  If you register now they will send you a £5 voucher to spend on their on line shop. 

The BTO are also asking for information this month - they are conducting a January survey on Blackcaps:

"Blackcaps are an increasingly common sight at garden feeding stations during winter and are spotted most often early in the New Year. The foods that we provide seem to be having a profound effect on the ecology of these birds, changing their migratory patterns and subsequent nesting habits.
With your help, we want to find out more about the behaviour of Blackcaps in winter gardens. Choose one day this January to help us answer these three key questions:
1) Which foods are Blackcaps eating?
2) Are there equal numbers of male and female Blackcaps?
3) Are the Blackcaps aggressive with other, similar sized birds?"

While I'm mentioning birds I will just add a link to Cock of the Rock ... Andy has been out birding every day this year and is growing increasingly concerned about the lack of thrushes in our area.  Very few Redwings, Fieldfares, Mistle Thrushes or Song Thrushes.  Hopefully they are all happily feeding in other parts of the country!

Happy spotting!