Skylarks take to the air with an early seasonal warble

It's been a strange winter - or, perhaps I should say, a strange pseudo-spring. In the lanes around my Somerset home, snowdrops have been in full bloom since the middle of January, while a chorus of birds continues to sing in my garden.

One Sunday morning we even had a visit from a smart male blackcap - a species that now spends the winter in the warmer setting of nearby Bristol, but usually shuns our chilly rural garden. This is our first wintering blackcap for almost a decade, and yet another sign that this winter is so much milder than usual.