In mid December I spent a couple of hours watching and taking lots of photos of Marsh tits, as I was keen to try to work out how many there are living in our local woodland. Two separate birds came to seed at one end of the woodland ride and a single bird came to seed at the other end of the wood. The distance between the two locations, and my photos, led me to believe that these were three different birds. And I had previously seen another bird with a slightly deformed left claw, which had been photographed by a local birder just a week earlier. This all leads me to believe there are now at least four Marsh tits in the woodland, which is excellent news for their ongoing survival.