Spring maybe or perhaps still winter.

Another busy week, plenty of job adverts on the website and lots of news headlines, some good, some not so good. It seems to have been a bit of a birdy week, with the release of a report on bird numbers from defra (not good reading), people talking about the run up to the RSPB big garden birdwatch next weekend, and today we've received reports from Wiltshire and Humberside about the effect of the extreme winter weather on barn owls - which are not coping well or even tolerably at all. We'd love to see a barnie at any time although to record one in the birdwatch would be rather specatular, what we don't want to see is the squirrel which is turning into a too frequent visitor to the bird feeders. We've received reports of tree creepers in the village this week, hanging upside down on some very slender branches and edging further along until the branch bends quite alarmingly at which point they either carefully reverse or drop off on the one below. The garden is showing plenty of signs of spring with lots of crocuses appearing, no flowers yet but in time. And also the big willow, which was supposed to felled (very heavy coppicing) last autumn, is smothered in little pussy willows. Despite the springlike garden the weather has remained firmly wintery these last couple of days with the frost not lifting from the lawns all day and the outside water (water butts and bird baths) remaining frozen solid.
Back to the office - CJS Weekly 24 January edition is printing and the digital editions are already online and available. This week it's 10 pages with 77 new paid posts of which 67 came direct to CJS.