In the garden

The old alpha male from the house sparrow family that commutes across the railway line

Laid up with a bad cold this week, last week's was just overture and beginners. Consequently I've been confined to barracks and going stir crazy. Luckily I had enough bird food in store to keep them ticking over all week. Just as well: both of the local house sparrow families have more or less set up camp for the Winter and the day the school field was frozen the starlings made do by dismantling all the fat blocks.

The two house sparrow families arrive in from different directions. The larger, 15—17 strong, family flies in from the right hand side. They split their time between my garden, the bushes behind neighbours' sheds, the railway embankments and the field across the railway line. They used to be headed by a male with an impressive bib and bright silvery white cheeks and underparts. His male descendants have less gaudy variations on silvery cheeks and flanks, even so a fleeting glance of one's face deep under cover of leaves very often make me think great tit at first guess. The other family, about eight strong, come in stage left. They live in the rambling roses in the garden by the station and spend most of their time around the station and the school playing field. They're somewhat yellower, the males having straw-coloured flanks and pale grey, not bright silver, cheeks. There's a bit of interbreeding between the families, evidenced by a couple of first-year males in the "right hand" family with the bright silver cheeks of that family and the bright straw flanks of the other.

Long-tailed tit

The pecking order in the garden's interesting because it isn't a simple linear arrangement. The coal tits defer to the blue tits, who defer to the great tits, they to the house sparrows and they to the starlings, all according to Hoyle. But the coal tits won't have any bullying from the house sparrows (or squirrels for that matter). They all let the goldfinches do as they please, I suspect because they're too damned fussy to be bothered with. Long-tailed tits and goldcrests seems to be allowed a bye as well, possibly because they don't stop long and don't account for much.

Chiffchaff

We had the last of the breeding blackcaps and whitethroats in September and the last of the chiffchaffs in early October. The Mahonia's in full flower now so I'm expecting the first of the wintering blackcaps and chiffchaffs any day now. The blackcaps tend to settle in proper around Christmas and leave in February. The chiffchaffs don't have an obvious last date: I'm never sure whether the birds singing in early March are coming or going