Self-isolation

Woodpigeons billing and cooing

Over the past couple of days I've acquired a new cough. The school playing field across the road was cut on Thursday, ditto the little playing field on the other side of the railway line, and everybody and his dog was mowing the lawn on Good Friday so in any other circumstances I'd assume it was just an allergic reaction and the catarrh was making me cough. These aren't normal times and according to the NHS site a new cough could be a COVID-19 symptom so I'm self-isolating for a week (at least) so's I don't run the risk of infecting anybody. A pain in the arse but better safe than sorry.

Yesterday as I was giving the cat her breakfast a couple of lesser black-backed gulls were making a commotion on the field across the road. This morning it was a pair of herring gulls. There's definitely some sort of passage of large gulls going on. A lone Canada goose flying over at rooftop height was a surprise.

A blackcap has set up camp on the railway embankment at the end of the garden. I always struggle to get my ear in properly with warblers every Spring. The blackcaps' practice runs at song sound very much like those of the robin and it's only when they first properly start singing that I'm sure of them. When the whitethroats arrive later I'll wonder what I'm listening to until one starts churring at me. And then I'll bump into a garden warbler and spend ages trying to work out whether it's a blackcap or not. Strangely, I don't have a problem with lesser whitethroat. It's a problem that'll be postponed this year: the blackcap's here now, we probably won't have the usual whitethroats at the railway station this year as they had to clear a lot of the scrub to get the equipment in for extending the platforms and we only get the occasional garden warbler and those usually singing in June.