Home thoughts

After saying pink-footed geese leave the scene quietly in Spring a small skein honked its way overhead last night bound for cooler climes, or more probably the Ribble Estuary for a pit stop.

Starlings

The dawn chorus is starting about 4:30am now the clocks have gone forward. The blackbirds start singing well before dawn, the robins joining in as daylight beckons. The collared doves, woodpigeons and wrens seem to need convincing it really is daytime before they start singing. My garden's well within a robin's territory this year so I'm only seeing the resident pair and no fisticuffs along the fence. I'm not sure if I'm on the margins of blackbird territories or if there's just a stray male trying to muscle in the resident's action. They spend large parts of each morning skipping round each over on the roof of next door's garage before skittering off on the arrival of one of the squirrels or magpies.

Most of the starlings are only coming in for breakfast then spending the day working the school playing field across the road. Otherwise its just the odd one or two of the residents popping in to give the fat balls a bit of hammer. I bought a couple of huge pine cones that had been crammed full of seeds and lard and these have proven very popular with the titmice and long-tailed tits. Their other benefit is that they can't be pecked into disintegration by the starlings so the fat stays on the feeder and not blanketed on the ground beneath.

The carrion crows are still sitting on the nest in the alder tree down the road, which might explain why the magpies seem to have given up on using the usual nest this year. It's only a few trees away from the crow's nest so they might be thinking they'd have been tempting fate. I  have an uneasy feeling that a pair of jackdaws have decided to nest in my chimney. It's spooky enough when they shout down the chimney, I shudder to think how begging youngsters will echo down the house.