Over the Border

 Living in the north of Nottinghamshire, geographically we sit on the edge of neighbouring counties.  Ten minutes drive and we're in South Yorkshire or Lincolnshire.  Lincoln is actually the closest city to us.

Our retired neighbour, Bill pointed us in the direction of Whisby Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire, so a few weeks ago we decided to hop over the border and pay a visit.

We were surprised by how large the reserve was, with several large lakes on the site.  A large part of the reserve was closed when we visited, as a bridge that was being built over a train line was not quite finished.  It is hoped that it will be open at the end of February.

There are numerous hides where you can watch what is going on out on the water and a rather impressive centre which includes a shop and large cafe.  I also took a few photos of the bird feeders that they had set up from a nearby viewing point.  I thought that our own garden feeders had a lot of Grey and Blue Tits using it.  At Whisby there seemed to be dozens of them.

We're looking forward to exploring more of this reserve in the coming weeks.  When we visited it was cold, dull and very overcast and I'm looking forward to seeing what else this great reserve has to offer.

Birds of a Feather

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that we have a soft spot for the pheasants that come into the garden.  In recent months, the male pheasant that we have nicknamed Billy has been the only bird around.  He comes to the back door where we feed him peanuts.  He's also started to hurry around to the back door when I call him from the bedroom window.

What we haven't really seen since early autumn have been any females.  On Saturday morning we where blessed with the presence of not one, but four hens who slipped into the garden.

Of course,they rushed straight to the area beneath the bird feeders.  We did not know if these girls where part of a family that we had seen in the summer or if they unconnected birds that had formed a group.  

One thing we did notice was as soon as one headed off, the others would leave what they where doing and hurry to catch up.  They headed straight for the bird feeder station in the corner of the garden.

The four pheasants hung around the garden for most of the day, moving from one feeder to the other.  We spotted Billy, observing from the farmers field behind the wire fence but neither he nor the females where particularly interested in each other.

We haven't seen them today, so its possible that they don't stay in the same area for very long.  This might be just as well, as we've seen and heard foxes in the garden in recent days and yesterday we also witnessed  one of the local cats take out a grey squirrel.  Nature can be cruel.