Whilst feeding the birds today I spotted 4 Fieldfare in one of the trees that border our garden. Fieldfare are winter visitors to Britain, from Scandinavia and start arriving here in October. These are the first I've seen this year. They tend to gather in large flocks, together with Redwing and our native thrushes. When in large groups they can be very noisy. Good, that's another new species to put on my list.

The guys from Rathbone have been back to continue the work in the garden.They have strimmed the grass, laid and edged the bark chip path and made ready the slabs for laying as the pergola floor.

I have uploaded a new set of photographs of the work done. Click here to view the latest photographs.

The past few days in the garden have been delightful. It's been sunny and warm and the birds have been taking advantage of the favourable conditions. There has been much tooing and froing of the Blue Tits, Robins and Nuthatch as they vie for a place on the bird table. The Robin guards the table from the Blue Tits but bows out when the Nuthatch arrives.

I've seen the first new bird in ages in the garden today. Whilst putting out food on the table I happened to notice movement in the yew tree in the corner. It was a Goldcrest. I had a pretty good view of it as it busily flit from branch to branch, its yellow crest on its head was very conspicuous.

Autumn is upon us but we have been fortunate in having a couple of warm and sunny days over the past week. The trees are noticeably changing colour now and there have been a few late speckled wood butterflies, wasps and honey bees seen in the garden.

I did a count on the number of species seen in the garden in the 12 months since our move from Edgbaston and the total is 97!! It really should be 97+ as there have been a few wildflowers/grasses that I have been unable to identify.

As the year begins to wind down, the photographs are becoming few and far between. I've uploaded the last few to the galleries - 5 to the insects gallery and 3 to the flora gallery.

Check out the updates to the Insect Gallery and Flora Gallery here.

 A couple of days ago the Rathbone guys came back to continue with the work on the garden. The grass has been strimmed again and the pergola is now up.

 I have posted 12 more photos to the galleries, 6 in the Insects Gallery, 3 in the Garden Project Gallery, 1 in the Birds Gallery and 2 in the Flora Gallery. Check out these updates.

I have posted a few more pictures to the garden galleries. 4 in the Insects gallery and 6 in the Flora gallery.

I've uploaded 2 more photographs in the Garden-Flora gallery and also 2 photographs in the Garden Project gallery.

Life in the garden has been very wet to say the least in the last couple of weeks. With the rain almost continuous there has been little to see, although I have taken a few more photographs in the bright spells between the rain. I hope to get them uploaded very soon.

I have uploaded a gallery for the start of the work on the garden project.

Click here to view this gallery.

This work was undertaken on 5th and 6th July by the Rathbone Society, assisted by bayc staff Paul, Anne, Peter and John.