Oh no - more snow

The Safari was crook today and confined to barracks. We woke up to heavy snow still falling making a winter wonderland of the world outside the bedroom window.

We had a look at the videos Stealth-cam had recorded over night and were pleased to see this character sniffing out the dog biscuits Frank had kindly donated.

Great to see some 'big' wildlife in the garden, not so great to see the number of different cats that pass through...though they still haven't caught the mice yet.

In fitness and in health, come hell or high water Frank has to be taken out so we risked a quick dash to the North Blackpool Pond Trail where the snow lay deep and crisp and even.

Shame about the bunch of helium balloons, someone obviously thinks littering is fun...it isn't so please avoid letting go of those balloons, better still just avoid them full-stop; these'll take some reaching but those that land in the sea are all to often reached by marine animals first often with fatal consequences

A stunning Redwing (31) was a new bird for this recording area but other than a few Blackbirds and Goldfinches there wasn't much in evidence.
Frank had a whale of a time charging around with his nose down playing snow ploughs before settling into a sniff-a-thon following  the scent of who knows what.

 Then he got tired and hot and had to lie down and eat some snow.

We were somewhat shocked to see that so many the houses on the new estate had lost the snow from their roofs. How come they are so un-insulated? You'd have thought that being only about 10 years old good insulation would have been fitted as standard and if not the occupiers would have invested in their own, after all they are now paying a fortune to heat up outside.

The wheel tracks are from the Rangers who had not long been there before us and flushed two Teal from the ditch a few feet to the right of the gate we were leaning on to take this pic.

All too soon it was time to skedaddle back to Base Camp. On the feeders we'd noted no big cold weather influx just the usual, Blue and Great Tits, a Coal Tit (possibly two), a small number of Greenfinches and singles of Goldfinch and Chaffinch. On the ground a couple of Blackbirds squabbled over the meagre pickings to had that the snow hadn't buried.

Where to next? Should be back to work tomorrow and a backlog of e-mails no doubt but you never know Patch 2 might produce something.

In the meantime let us know what the snow is covering in your outback