ALL of the villages around East Lancashire are fascinating places for naturalists to visit – and one of my favourites is Bolton-by-Bowland.

I followed the road from the old cross and stocks, in the direction of Slaidburn.

There are lots of small spaces off the road where people park their cars and feed the birds.

The birds are well used to this and soon gather wherever a car is parked.

In the fields away to my left I watched six Sika deer grazing and they are very interesting.

They are related to our native red deer and were introduced by Lord Ribblesdale who had his estate at Gisburne Hall, now a private hospital.

Sika come from Asia and have escaped from the Ribblesdale estate and now live wild around Bolton-by-Bowland.

This area is also a good place to spot the brown hare, more easily seen in the colder months of the year when the vegetation is at its lowest.

I then spent a lot of time watching birds finishing off the food left by the last motorist.

I added half my breakfast and watched a great spotted woodpecker feeding on the scraps of my bacon butty, and seven long-tailed tits making short work of a bag of peanuts.

Some sensible visitor had put more peanuts in the crevices of a tree trunk and attracted two nuthatches.

A few years ago nuthatches were quite rare in East Lancashire, but now they are much more common.

This just goes to show that just one visit will never do justice to an area. Bolton-by-Bowland, like other villages, is never the same two days running and this accounts for their attraction.