She dashes through the garden as if following an invisible chicane, skirting the hawthorn and slicing past the bird feeders before heading up and over the copse. Empty clawed, as many of her raids end up, leaving the garden devoid of birds until the memory of her fades and the feeders are busy again.

This morning we have had the first female blackcap I’ve seen for a good while. Our growing flocks of lesser redpolls and siskins are beginning to come into something nearer their spring plumage, redpolls with pinky red chests, and the siskins bright yellows and green – a vibrant change from the more delicate blues and yellows of the tits.

Looking out now we have two nuthatches on the sunflower heart feeders and the song thrush is still happily tucking into the ivy berries. Chaffinches and dunnocks are doing their usual clean up under the containers.

Last night wasn’t quite so cold meaning there isn’t such a scrum for food, with less bickering between the smaller finches. It always seems that what they lack in size, they more than make up for in feistiness!

Snow is still lying in patches but has lost its grip on trees and bushes – the fox will still stand out as it makes its way down the bank behind us under the wary eye of the crows. They are the ‘top of the tree’ as far as the hierarchy of our birds is concerned, then come the magpies who boss the jays, and down to garden level with the greater spotted woodpecker and nuthatches ruling the feeders. That said, sometimes both of these are chased off by a noisy gaggle of starlings which will just descend and ignore any ‘rules’ or rights! The sparrowhaws and buzzards are outside of this ‘hierarchy’, free spirits wheeling over a much larger territory.

There is a small valley at the bottom of our garden, including a copse with its mix of aspen, willow, ash, hazel and the beautiful Italian poplars. There are rough banks covered by brambles where the dunnocks nest and a small open patch of grassland with green alkanet, marjoram and cow parsley. All these different areas are home to many insects, birds and mammals, and we are very lucky to share it with them!