Home thoughts

The garden feeling the heat a bit still

The weather having cooled down a little the spadgers have descended on the garden mob-handed, at one point there were a couple of dozen of them milling about. I had wondered if they were being shy because the cat's been sleeping out in the sun all week but the way they completely ignored her as she dozed a couple of yards away from the bird bath suggests not. The goldfinches are less sanguine so I've made sure the feeders at the other side of the garden are topped up.

I keep hoping to see the very pale youngster I saw the other week, if it's visiting I keep missing it. I saw it, or one very like it, near the station earlier in the week, its head and underparts being a very milky coffee colour and its back and wings sandy with pale brown (what we used to call "camel") streaks.

It occurs to me that yet again I have no idea what happened in the end with the crow's nest at the corner of the road. Every Spring a noisy drama becomes a quiet mystery. I suspect the rooks had it in the end, a couple of young rooks appeared on the school field a couple of weeks before any of the rooks started coming back in from the established rookeries.

There was a notable passage of lesser black-backs this evening. I'm guessing the roost on Salford Quays is building up again.