Two good pics.
Anyone else noticed a real dearth of birds recently?
Yesterday, in nice weather, a 5 mile amble around Haldon Forest - mixed conifers with beech oak willows etc - produced 1 buzzard, a little flock of long tailed tits and the odd wood pigeon or two.
Wintertime in woodland is always going to be quiet, the birds don't give themselves away by singing very much at this time of year, mostly just contact calls to be heard, although yesterday my afternoon walk had the constant accompaniment of Song Thrushes singing for the first time this year, (I also saw Robins, [also singing], Wren, Goldcrest, Chaffinch, Blackbirds, Buzzard and Raven).
Another reason for often not seeing many birds in winter is that they will regularly congregate into what are known as "Tit Flocks" and travel around together, if you see the flock you'll see many birds, but if your walk doesn't coincide with the flock you could be forgiven for thinking that there are no birds at all. If you just want to see birds in this situation, it's better achieved by sticking in one place and they may come to you.
Tit flocks are a fairly loose collection of any or all from Blue, Great and Coal tits, (Long tailed tits will sometimes join but are generally too restless to remain with the flock for long), Nuthatches, Goldcrests, Treecreepers and Chaffinch are the other most common species to join, but almost any woodland bird and some not so confined to woodland have been observed in these flocks.