Lazy day

Spadgers making inroads on the sunflower seeds

A combination of a couple of nights' poor sleep, high pollen count and a general can't be botheredness have pretty much kept me at home the past few days, venturing out to go to the shops or else getting some fruit picked before the blackbirds and squirrels get the lot.

The spadgers are keeping busy rummaging round the roses and fruit bushes for greenfly, though completely ignoring the blackfly that have descended on the broad beans by the bird bath. They, and the squirrels, are going through a couple of kilos of sunflower seeds a week. They'd go through more but I'm limiting top-ups of the feeders to twice a week. 

The usual pair of goldfinches and a pair of young great tits are regulars, though more often heard than seen, and the first of the adult blue tits reappeared from hiding for the post-breeding moult the other day and looked very spruce indeed. Still no sign of the robins or adult great tits though one of the robins holding territory by the station has started singing again and I'm seeing or hearing one of the coal tits most times I'm waiting for a train. The warblers, which were hard work to see at the best of times, have gone quiet so I'm left to hoping they're still out there somewhere in the foliage on the embankments.

I'm seeing the piebald woodpigeon only every so often, and then only when it joins the crowd on the school playing field. I think it favours the small field on the other side of the railway line, I'm generally passing by there at the wrong time of day to catch that flock on the ground. I know at least two pairs of woodpigeons are occupying the sycamores on the embankment and my conifer but the foliage is so dense I only see them if I happen to look out when they're to-ing and fro-ing.

The swifts look a bit thinner on the ground this year, perhaps two pairs overhead. Things look a bit better a few streets away near my dad's, eight birds were flying low overhead as the weather front came in this evening; As I was coming home three swallows passed by, seems a bit late (or early) for them to be moving through.

It was nice to see one of the local foxes on its dawn patrol of the garden this morning. I've forgiven them for flattening the irises at the bottom of the garden (and I've learned that lion dung is very good for keeping the neighbourhood cats out of the garden but the foxes love it). I don't recall seeing this individual before, a very fine beast with a sleek ginger coat and dark, iron grey hind quarters. 

• Blackbird 1
• Carrion Crow 1
• Collared Dove 1
• Dunnock 1
• Goldfinch 1
• House Sparrow 22
• Jackdaw 1
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 2
• Magpie 2
• Rook 1
• Starling 6
• Woodpigeon 2
• Wren 1

I read that Spike Island's whooper swan was an injured bird that was looked after by the RSPCA and released there when it had recovered. You fairly often see individual geese or swans over summering in their Winter quarters because they'd been injured and couldn't join their flock on migration. There's nearly always at least one whooper to be found at Martin Mere in the Summer waiting for the flock to return.