Brambling

I'm blipping this for its ornithological interest rather than photographic merit. This is a female brambling, and it's the first time I have seen a brambling in our garden in the eleven years we have lived here. What's more, there were three of them. It is a type of finch about the size of a chaffinch, but with a heavier bill and plumage tinged with orange. The males in winter have blackish heads and more orange on the breast than the females.

Bramblings are winter visitors to Britain, breeding in the upland birch forests of Scandinavia. Numbers vary hugely from year to year, when winters are milder in southern Scandinavia, fewer will migrate to Britain and southern Europe. It's a sign of the severity of the winter on the Continent that there are large numbers in Cumbria at the moment.

I also managed to get some pictures of the female reed bunting that has been frequenting the garden in the last few weeks, and like the male that I blipped a few weeks ago, she has a ring on her right leg. The perfect couple. They will almost certainly have been ringed in the Leighton Moss RSPB bird reserve 4 miles away.

The arctic weather returned yesterday evening, though this time we had a lot less snow than Lancashire to the south of us where many drivers spent the night trapped on the M6.

Yesterday, my late night blip reported on progress in sorting the house. Suddenly after 9 months of disruption, everything finally came together, in part thanks to the break in the cold weather that enabled the builders to get back onto the roof to fix it; and then for the scaffolders to come and take away the scaffolding that has been annoying our neighbours for two years. We are now gradually moving furniture back into the living room. The carpet also means that for the first winter in the last five or so, we will not have to wear thick woolly socks in the living room because of the ferocious drafts through the floorboards.

I needed a couple of days away from blipping to concentrate both on work and helping Wifie with sorting out the home jobs. Thanks for bearing with me in my absence.