We live in such an out-of-the-way place that our local birds don’t really get bothered by nasty 21st Century scourges such as monoculture removing food sources, pesticides or reduction in appropriate habitats. Therefore there are birds living in our area that I’ve never seen before.

We spend a lot of time, effort and money encouraging them into our garden and there is always a choice of food on the table and in the feeders. Since we’ve been off work, we’ve identified a species that we’ve never seen here before – the Willow Tit. It’s red-listed and there are only around 3000 breeding pairs in the UK these days. We know we have at least one pair because we’ve seen more than one in a single eye-full if you know what I mean!

They’re sweet little things and we’ve discovered they have a penchant for black sunflowers by the way they come in, grab one then sit in a nearby bush to scoff it before returning for another. We’ve seen four different tits all at the same time this week, including the Willow Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Coal Tit. We also get visits from Long-Tailed Tits but we’ve not spotted any of them this week.

OK – I know this makes me a nurdy geek but there are worse things to be nurdy about.