Saw a kestrel on my way in to Cromer yesterday afternoon.

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"Everyone who has a garden of any size should leave some of it as "ungardened" and wild. Weeds and thistles attract great birds!"

Wev'e got all that, Will and some really wild patch close by. There is a strip of land in the field behind us which the farm doesn't use because of a pipe running to the septic tank for our and a couple of other houses. We rent part of that strip for our veg plot, etc. (although part of that is wild, Pip, eg. likes to let the cow parsley grow in one bit) but further up, apart from a track through, it is completely left to nature. There are pigsties up there that you can't see for brambles and blackthorn.

This area seems to me to be particularly liked by blackbirds but I don't normally see the unusual.

I think my favourite sight round the back was a yellow hammer last year. The most unusual was a moorhen that seemed to have got lost (or perhaps was exploring having stopped off at our small pond for a drink?) - it was in one of our sheds.

Perhaps what I'd most like to see there again though is a mammal - a pipistrelle. I don't sit out there often at dusk but I used to like it when they would fly close to me to (I think - they seem to be quite curious about what's around) find out what I was about.