Lazy Sunday afternoon

A restful sort of a day for a change. The school playing field's been dead quiet all day  which is odd, no idea why it's not been full of rooks, jackdaws and woodpigeons as usual. A handful of swifts have been flying very high overhead and some black-headed gulls have flown by without stopping.

The garden's been busy with birds in a very quiet way, even the sparrows have been a bit furtive. The cat I live with has been asleep somewhere upstairs all day (besides which the sparrows don't take a lot of notice of her) but there are plenty of other hairy hooligans that may be lurking about. Only the coal tit and collared doves have made noisy arrivals. I noticed that the juvenile robin's got a lot of orange about its throat now, I wonder how long it'll be before it's chased off the premises.

I went out to find out what the odd noise was outside — a young magpie was trying to start to build a nest in the tree opposite. While I was watching it try to persuade a stick to stay balanced in the fork of a branch I noticed a flight of birds coming our way. Turned out to be six cormorants.

Cormorants