January 2010 - Pied Wagtail visits garden in the snow!

Tuesday 5th: Heavy snow hit South Yorkshire today. The snow fell relentlesly from 6am until about 4pm, over ankle deep, the heaviest snowfall since 1981! So searching for food became a priority for the birds. On three occasions throughout the day, the last being 4pm, we had a visit from a Pied Wagtail - A FIRST in our garden! This female must be an opportunist and made a pit-stop here because to both mine and my wife's knowledge, we have never seen a pied Wagtail in the garden at any time of the year! My thanks to Melanie for capturing this video footage and taking the superb stills.




As you can imagine, the garden was teaming with bird life today. We even had a visit from a male Chaffinch on the bird table - another rarity in the garden! A recorded 6 Blackbirds, 3 males and 3 females, 2 Robins, 7 Collard Doves and 1 Wood Pigeon along with the usual gang of Starlings and a battalion of House Sparrows also dined!

Meanwhile at work, I had a close encounter with a Kestrel at 12:20pm. It was barely 20 feet away, perched in a small sapling tree trying to shelter from the falling snow.