Dec 31st. The Railway Children. Oliver Royds an old friend is producing this show at Waterloo station, when I asked hi if he could help this was some tickets I didn't realise that we would be VIPs and I such we had our own drinks lounge and we were shown round the set after the play, it's not oftenthat a steam train comes to the middle of a theatre!!

Hear endith my 2011 photo of the Day blog, its been quite consuming, lots of fun. I have plans to do one in another 10 years.

Follow our new Blog at http://andrewfergusnatureblog.blogspot.com/

Dec 30th Berkeley Square. There was no nightingale but there was a great Christmas tree. Susan and I have done a house swap with Fred and Jess who are in Somerset today. We are in Fred's flat adjoining Berkeley Square and were all teed up to go to a couple of shows and enjoy the London life.

Dec 29th .A male wigeon. A Susan gave me a really good lens for my camera for Christmas and I was keen to get out today to give it a test, I managed to get up to the RSPB reserve at Graylake, near Bridgwater where I took this shot. I'm quite pleased with it and hopefully I can do a lot better, especially on my ne nature blog which I'm running next year with Fergus.

De 28th Anne, James and Lucy came down for a couple days it was great to catch up even though we have seen that the wedding a month ago. Lucy and Richard from our honeymoon in early January to India and James who is hiding from this photograph is helping us with our photos.

Dec 27th  Starlings again. This evening James, Fergus and myself went to Ham Wall to see the collection of starlings again. We forgot that it wa a Bank Holiday when we got there the crowds were really quite large. The starlings settle in the reed beds in the dusk but just before they settle they congregate into huge swarms of up to 2,000,000 birds, tonight's show was good but not spectacular

Dec 26th it's Boxing Day and the Mummers Play in the middle of North Curry. For those of you who don't know this ancient English tradition, these play are about the seasons of the year, good versus bad, in with new and out with the old, rather pagan. But St George always wins.

Dec 25th it's Christmas Day.We've got a big contingent up from Cornwall being Merlin, Rory, Dominic and Wendy, with Susan's sister Sally coming down from Gloucester. Great time had by all. Th the goose and turkey which I bought ( both which were quite small) were excellent, as was Wendy's choice wine.

De 24th Mistletoe for Christmas and tons of it. This is a beech tree nearby with at least 20 clumps of mistletoe on it. Whilst we see a lot of mistletoe on the apple orchards, (where the mistlle thrush wipes its beak after eating berries on the apple tree) I was surprised to see quite so many growths on the beech tree, I'm told the large ones have already been taken for Christmasr

Dec 23rd Daffodils. Here they are in te graveyard at North Curry church and if truth be told the been there for at least a week already, out but it's been such a mild winter winter but everything seems to be in advance of itself Please daffodils do have a lovely view of Curry moor which is shown in the background.

Dec 22nd Borrow Hill Cider. Today we went down to buy some cider at Hewish Episcopi. Run by Julian Temperley. As featured on River Cottage. Julian has two lovely old copper stills which have been brought over from northern France where the we used to make cider brandy. They are called Fifi and Josephine.

Dec 21st I was going to call this photograph "pudding club" as the two participants featured in the photograph were the only two who decided to brave pudding at the Fox and Pelican today. We all had a quick lunch prior to Christmas and dispersing in our different directions it was good fun

Dec 20th Jane Mendelsohn. It's been a while since we saw Jane and today I managed to get her to pose with the Grayshott Christmas tree which has just been put up, Tim and Kate had twins are travelling all over the place and we hope Jane is coming to see us in the early New Year

Dec 19th .Rachel our newest great niece. Rachel's parents Greg and Claire are over from South Africa for a couple of weeks to let family see their lovely new daughter. We had supper with them at Rob and Jill's which was great fun

Dec 18th Stonehenge in North Curry. As I was driving down past Stonehenge during the week I thought it would be fun to a direct my own version of that ancient monument. So thanks to Jim and Darren with all the offcuts of stone from our wall I have made a mini Stonehenge right middle of Susan's flowerbed.I suspect it may not last as long as the other one!

Dec 17th the Sedgemoor annual poultry auction. Today there were around 650 lots of turkeys chickens geese and the like to be auctioned. I purchased two turkeys and a goose. For those who watch River Cottage, the gentleman in the middle of the photograph is Hugh's chicken Guru

Dec16th Darren and Jim after two or three months of coming on Saturday mornings the wall around the front garden is now finally finished, these two have done a great job and put up with so many changes of design.

Dec 15th West Sedgemoor is a 1600 ha estate lying between North Curry and Curry rival. The good news is that the majority of it is owned by the RSPB and therefore fully protected, a fabulous drove cuts from left to right through the heart of this piece of wetland and it is from here that the RSPB are launching their crane project

Dec 14th Charlton Orchards in Creech St Michael a couple of miles to the west of North Curry.They have a marvellous selection of specimen apple trees and at the moment they grading the remainder of their crop to sell over the next few months

Dec 13th Jack Marriott. I called in to Jack's office in Elstead just outside Godalming today. Jack is about to exchange contracts for us on a house in Hindhead and is enjoying the benefits of working part-time. Having been a senior solicitor with a London firm

Dec 12th.  John Hilder. It was great to catch up with John as we hadn't seen him for 6 to 9 months. John sold his business to Keats of Haslemere and has been enjoying retirement since. He is heavily involved in amateur dramatics in Grayshott and I hope your pop in from time to time.

Dec 11th. Two more air dried hams hang under the trees again. This year we bred Oxford Sandy and black pigs and these two hams are from one of the castrated boars. They have spent five weeks in sold and now they will hang for nine months in the wind and out of the damp.