I wasn't convinced I had the legs on me for the walk involved in the adventure I'd half in mind for today but I was quickly convinced I didn't have it in me to do that walk in this rain.
The small birds in the garden kept undercover until what turned out to be quite a pleasant late afternoon which I didn't take advantage of having decided today is a writing day. While I was catching up on a project a mixed tit flock — four each of great tit, blue tit and long-tailed tit, with a cameo by the female coal tit — were busy at the last of the sunflower seeds.
The magpies and blackbirds have been busy stripping the berries off the rowan tree. I still haven't decided whether the tree needs to come down or if I can get away with just pruning some of the lower branches to open up that part of the garden. Whichever I'll need to get somebody in to hack back Network Rail's sycamores before they overwhelm the place. I'll be digging up their babies all Winter.
The lack of starlings has been a worrying feature of the Summer which isn't getting any better in Autumn. There's a flock of about fifteen birds that does the rounds of the school playing fields within a mile of here and roosts on the roof of The Melville pub. Other than that nothing.
Oddly, despite the rain there were only a few gulls on the school playing field, six black-headed gulls and four herring gulls. I thought perhaps a decent flock would come in later for a pre-roost worm dance but it didn't happen. Which just goes to show that with birds you can only predict what is likely to happen, not what will.
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