Ward End Park.

A short visit to a chilly Ward End Park today. Birds spotted were, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Song Thrush, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Robin, Starling, Blackbird, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Woodpigeon, Feral Pigeon, Pekin Duck, Muscovy Duck, Moorhen, Coot, Tufted Duck, Canada Goose and Mallard. At the moment there are two Coots on the nest, the one in the picture on a grand nest in the water, the other has cleverly erected it's nest on one of the islands. It's always great to see a Great Spotted Woodpecker, but it was equally pleasing to see plenty of Song Thrush and Starling, but not so great was not seeing any House Sparrow, even though I did hear some chirping. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view, there's a local Sparrowhawk visiting my garden on what must be a daily basis because I see it most days and must be coming the days I don't manage to see it, I haven't actually seen it take anything yet but a House Sparrow and a Collared Dove have had a close escape in the last couple of days but does that mean a male and female are on the prowl being as the male normally only goes for birds up to the size of a Sparrow, while the female, being larger, will go for birds as big as the size of a dove, it swoops literally out of nowhere and all the birds scatter and don't come back for a while. I think that it's down to the fact  that there's hardly anyone else by my garden feeding our feathered friends, so they converge on my garden thus creating a Mcdonalds fly through for the Sparrowhawk, coincidentally I've also seen a Buzzard riding the thermals high above my house, but never seen one venture into my back garden yet. Talking of garden visitors, I've also got a pair of Long Tailed Tits visiting on a regular basis, they love foraging about the dwarf apple tree and even taking the odd seed out of one of the half coconuts in the tree that I fill up with seed, mealworm, suet pellets and sunflower hearts etc, they then have a very skittish bath, they don't stop in the water long, they just have a lot of short visits to and from the bath and apple tree.