Big changes ahead.

After nearly 18 years living in our current house and  30 years of living within walking distance of the four houses we've had since we got married we have decided to move house! Not a million miles away but to a more rural location with a much larger garden and loads of potential for encouraging local wildlife. It'll mean leaving the local patch I've worked for years although the new house is on the extreme boundary of my usual haunts - about 3 miles away as the bird flies.

It'll be a big wrench and I'll have to start feeding the birds to encourage more into the garden - there appears to be very few birds in the garden though the presence of 7 fruit trees augers well for winter thrushes......

IN our current garden I know where all the birds , such as the Blackbird, tend to nest and with a number of nest boxes up we have a healthy population of Blue & Great Tits. The damp patches filled with rotting logs attracts amphibians.

The new place currently doesn't have any nest boxes, any feeders and any wildlife friendly 'wild' areas' but the potential is there. We've even got plants to set aside some of the garden as a wild flower meadow and the tall trees at the back of the garden lend themselves to an owl box!