Hares

The land to the west of the A34 is privately owned farm land, but a footpath near Marcham Mill - (Marcham Jubilee Walk), allows members of the public to explore this area and observe an animal that appears to be absent from the east of the A34 - the brown hare.
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Superficially like a rabbit, the most obvious differences are the long ears and longer legs.  

Unlike rabbits they don't have burrows, instead they can spend daylight hours in a shallow depression in the ground (called a form),  making them harder to see.

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But maybe it's the lack of dogs along the path, but they don't spend look like this and are fairly easy to see. They also don't seem to be too concerned about the frequent buzzards that pass overhead.

Unlike rabbits, they are not social animals, but when territories overlap they can be seen in small collectives (known as a mute of hares!!):

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What hares are famous for is the 'boxing' that takes place in March, this when an unreceptive females fights off the unwanted advances of a hopeful male and is a very entertaining sight and like snowdrops mean spring is not too far away.

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More Snowdrops

Although it doesn't have the wow factor of Welford Park, Waterperry Gardens - to the east of Oxford are an ideal place for any budding Galanthophile. What it lacks in quantity, it makes up in variety including with many different species on display.
Including, Galanthus 'S. Arnot', similar to the common snowdrop, but with a distinct green tip on it's outer tepals (technically snowdrops don't have petals, as their petals and sepals are the same colour they are botanically classified as tepals).
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The Galanthus Dionysus is another species, with a more elaborate flower forming a predominate green rosette.
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Whilst others, like the 'Mighty Atom' are so rare that an individual bulb might sell for as much as £40, that it and other rarerities are kept encaged:.
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The area by the river Thame contains thousands of snowdrops, mostly consisting of the common Galanthus Nivalis, having spread by vegetatively -  an impressive feat as over 200 years the bulbs have divided and then spread by birds and animals - no pollination was involved - to form this impressive scene.

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For fans of snowdrops, Shirl has an excellent snowdrop festival blog post on her equally excellent blog, which is well worth reading:

http://blog.shirlsgardenwatch.co.uk/2011/02/snowdrop-festival-visits.html

Snowdrops

Nothing indicates the end of winter and the approach of spring more then the appearance of snowdrops - and there are more in the garden then ever.
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The most prevalent in our garden are  Galanthus nivali identified by the distinct small green bridge between the three petals that form the flower.  Although this is classified as the native UK snowdrop, it was first recorded in the UK as recently as the 1770's. 

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Along the Ock Valley Walk there are a few small clumps, finding the shade provided by the  trees an ideal habitat. Snowdrops don't often spread via pollination (maybe they flower too early in most of the UK to attract pollinating insects),  so these are possibly garden escapees, maybe spread by a person or an animal moving the bulbs.  
With the different shaped flower they are likely to be one of the other 75 variety of snowdrop in the UK.
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For truly impressive snowdrop numbers, a short journey down the A34 to Welford Park near Newbury, where the snowdrop wood contains hundreds of thousands of snowdrops and where a walk in the sunshine gives a feeling that spring at last is on it's way.
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More garden birds

bThe past few days has seen some of the regular visitors that did not drop in during the big garden birdwatch:
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Greenfinch: There are usually two greenfinches in the garden - a male and a female, according to my RSPB Handbook of British Birds, the population of greenfinches fluctuates by the general trend is up - possibly helped by the trend of people putting out suitable food, like sunflower hearts.
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Woodpigeon: Several woodpigeons often frequent the garden, seeming to hoover up seed dropped from the feeders.
Woodpigeons are one of the success stories of the UK's move to intensive agriculture (especially now agricultural chemicals are now more controlled) and now seen as pest to some crop growers and gardeners.
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Collarded Dove: An ungainly visitor to the sunflower heart feeders.  There are up to four of them at anyone time, but what is interesting is that they didn't breed in the UK until 1955, when a pair nested in Kent, there are now an estimated 295,000 territories in the UK.
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Sparrowhawk: This magnificent male sparrowhawk has previously featured in this blog and is seen about once a month, in the same place and never with the signs of a kill. Always a pleasure to see it, but if it had shown up during the big garden birdwatch then the number of birds counted would have probably have been considerably lower.
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Return of the Robins

If we had done our 'big garden birdwatch survey' at 10am on Sunday instead of 3pm on Saturday then there would have been different results - for a start there would have been at least 10 goldfinches in the garden and we would have recorded two robins:
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These are the first robins to visit the garden for a long time. Interestingly, they are fiercely territorial, yet these two seemed to tolerate each other.  Unfortunately male and female robins look identical, so it's not possible to tell if this is a potential breeding pair or if they were just migrants stopping off.
Apparently, robins can't visually identify each others gender either and the only way a male knows another robin is a female is through it's response to a territorial display.