Home thoughts

The back garden

The garden's becoming productive of more things than just horsetails, wood avens and goosegrass. The young starlings, having stripped the feeders of suet balls and fat blocks faster than I could replenish them, have joined their parents in their attempt to devastate the leatherjacket community in the playing field across the road. There are furtive hints in the rose bushes that the first young spadgers are abroad and making inroads on the sunflower seeds. The young great tits have been back and today, finally, the blue tits have brought a couple of youngsters in for a feed.

A few young rooks have arrived from God knows where, as far as I can determine the old crow's nest at the corner of the road has just been something for the local corvids to squabble over rather than use. The young rooks, being both very noisy and having no boundaries, have put the jackdaws' backs up no end. For the past few days there's been a mid-morning racket as the jackdaws see the rooks safely off "their" chimney pots and down onto the field.

Oddly enough the garden warbler in my garden and the blackcap down at the station have both gone quiet just as the robins have started singing again after a week of getting their breath back after what seems to have been an unsuccessful breeding season.

After yesterday's teatime visit to Marshside I was chagrined to hear that a lesser scaup had turned up there this morning. That would be a lifer for me but family commitments precluded my haring off for a twitch. A further complication was this afternoon's arrival of a white-tailed lapwing at Bickershaw just outside Leigh, a major rarity anywhere. I seriously laid down plans for an evening twitch then told myself not to be damned stupid: anything involving six buses on a Sunday evening is an invitation to stress out completely. If I'm lucky one, other or both wil be about tomorrow and I'll take the opportunity to completely knacker myself.