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Rooks, Lostock School

It's a quiet time in the garden: there's enough wild fruit and seeds and insects about in the wild for most of the birds to only come in to top up first thing in the morning and again in the evening. The goldfinches linger longer — people with municipal strimmers always take out the thistles first — and the sessions where adult sparrows teach new spadgers where to find the feeders tend to be mid-morning. The first brood of male spadgers are already showing tiny goatee bibs.

One sad note: I found out what happened to one of the adult robins. My next-door neighbour tells me he found its remains. It had been a regular companion to his digging over his new vegetable bed. I know it's the natural scheme of things and that if I was a keen observer of mealworms I'd be shaking my fist at the robins but it's still a bit sad when it happens.

The rooks are definitely back on the school playing field though they've only got two or three youngsters with them. The jackdaws have half a dozen youngsters in tow, I always know by the noise when they're arriving for the morning.