Bags of bird food, a stinky weasel and two awards

Wet and cold continues, I know it is winter, but it shouldn't have to be like this all the time. Started off collecting ten sack of bird food from Hinton, thanks to Peter Mays for arranging this source, it is the key to attracting in our Brambling and Chaffinch flock. The Bramblings seem to be all over the place, well over 50 today and I hear three were caught by the ringers when they were in on Saturday.

As I mentioned Hinton I will report that as I drove through there on Saturday evening I saw a Polecat on the road verge, the first live one I have seen there after two corpses. I also realised today that the Latin for Polecat Mustela putorius would translate roughly as "Stinky Weasel". Still yet to see one of these at Blashford though, although I have found a corpse just south of Ringwood.

We were also out of black sunflower and nyger seeds, but I had to go and buy those, at present I seem to be using about 25kg of sunflower every ten days and nyger seed is now disappearing fast with so many Lesser Redpoll about.

The web cam has gone wonky, I think maybe a Badger has rubbed against it, the camera has gone loose on the fitting and is either showing a rotated image or is out of focus and I thought this camera stuff was going to be straight forward.

Following the break-in to the donations box on Friday we had to supply our finger prints for elimination so it was out with the ink pads, the police had checked the box for the prints of the miscreants on Saturday. I had seen it done on the television, but this was a first for me.

I grabbed a chance to get the last of the willows coppiced today, just a few that still needed doing and Jim seemed to want to escape the office for some reason.

Ended a varied day with a trip to the New Forest District Council offices to collect an award or two. In the Access for All Awards, Blashford Lakes won the outdoor recreation category and was also the overall winner within the New Forest area. I confess I did not even know we had been entered into this until we were told we had won. It seems we were nominated more than once as well.

If the rain stops I might even try and include a picture again before the end of the week!