'Winter can seem like a very quiet season when it comes to wildlife. There isn’t the all-pervading buzz of insects or the constant chatter of house martins over the garden but it is always busy and interesting if you know where to look.
In winter we get large flocks of finches that congregate together to forage around the parkland and arable fields. Recently we had the wonderful sight of an immense flock of bramblings – around 500 in total that landed en masse in the farmyard at Croft. Bramblings are northern cousins of the chaffinch and are similar in size and the males in particular are a beautiful orange colour with black and white patches. In the orchard we leave windfall apples on the ground for birds like redwing and fieldfare to feast on and our bird feeding area is always well stocked and busy with woodpeckers, nuthatches and siskins.