Southfields Farm, Coleshill.

Great visit to Southfields Farm in Coleshill this morning where it was surprising to see that John was still feeding birds supplementary food, so there's still time to get down to the farm to the two locations he leaves the seed and take in the rarity of seeing double figures of Yellowhammer feeding, I'd very rarely seen a Yellowhammer until I first went to the farm, now it's expected that you'll see them as is seeing and hearing hundreds of House Sparrow, even though I have c.50 House Sparrow that visit my garden it still amazes me to see so many at the farm. Talking of John leaving or growing food for the birds, as you can see in the last three photos, there will be plenty of food for birds in the fields, so you'll get to see the great spectacle of 300+ Linnet feasting on the seed from those plants as well as the other birds.

It was also great to see where there are some dead trees, that they've been cut down to the bare minimum and the dead wood has been utilized to make insect houses and log piles and the trees have been presumably left for birds such as Great Spotted Woodpecker to nest in and if that wasn't good enough brand new bird boxes have also been erected. On another similar note it was great to see that all the hedgerows have been cut well in advance of the breeding season and not been fell fowl to the horrid practice of 'flailing' or even worse have that disgusting practice of having netting put around them to stop the birds nesting in them, John is proof that farmers can farm and still look after the wildlife. You can sign the petition to make it a criminal offence to 'net hedgerows' here. Make 'netting' hedgerows to prevent birds from nesting a criminal offence.

Birds seen today were, Yellowhammer, Skylark, House Sparrow, Dunnock, Wren, Robin, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Coal Tit, Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Reed Bunting, Starling, Pheasant, Collared Dove, Woodpigeon, Jackdaw, Raven, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Cormorant, Mute Swan, Mallard and Coot.

Last but least, it was great to see a Hare bounding through one of the fields, an animal which I don't see nearly often enough.

Cole End Nature Reserve, Coleshill.

Nice visit to Cole End Nature Reserve, well it was mostly nice apart form the one aspect I'll get to  at the end of this post.

As you might guess there was plenty of songbirds singing which apart from when you where near the motorway was quite audible, always nice to be away from the hustle and bustle where you can really take in nature.

There wasn't as many birds as I'd like ot have seen but at least this land hasn't fell prey to evil developers who only care about money and couldn't give a damn about our wildlife.

Birds seen today were, Buzzard, House Sparrow, Dunnock, Wren, Robin, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Mistle Thrush, Jay, Blackbird, Woodpigeon, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Blackbird, Mute Swan (three flying overhead in the direction of Shustoke Reservoir, Moorhen and Mallard.

Sadly now I have to report this incident of disgusting vandalism, I'll let the photos do most of the talking but if you know the area this is off Gilson Drive, how people think this is acceptable is completely beyond my comprehension, shame on them !