Sunrise 08:11 Sunset 16:19 GMT

I’ve been rather lazy of late and not adding anything to my Diary but I make my excuses of being out with the dogs before dawn and the weather has not been inspiring to get out and about. We have had very mild weather with grey skies and the Stour has been near or flooded for some time making walking very difficult. Although we are past the ‘shortest day’ I’m still not noticing any change.

One advantage of the dark morning is that I’m still regularly seeing the Barn Owl and much to my surprise one morning recently there were two, one flying near the roost and another perched on the roof of the barn, which can only be good news to have the pair roosting in the barn. The weather has been fairly kind to them being so mild although the rain hasn’t helped but there has been plenty of chance for hunting. We are still getting a Hedgehog feeding at night, again because of the mild weather. I’ve tried various foods, dog meat, hedgehog food, suet but he seems to like the mealworms so that’s what I’m feeding him.

We took a trip into Blandford this morning, the sun was shining so we thought we would walk along the river, the river was now back in it’s banks although the ground was slippery to walk on. We were hoping to see an Otter as they have been sighted during the day in Blandford once again. It took a little patience but sure enough one appeared and swam fairly quickly upstream which didn’t give us much time to take a photograph. It was great to see her but she disappeared up the side of the weir and went upstream.

There seems to be a resident Cormorant by the weir I took a photograph of him preening and drying his wings, when you get close that green eye is very striking on the bird.