Home thoughts

House sparrow
I think this cock's one of the 2022 vintage.

It was a lovely Autumn day but the circumstances of the day scotched the plans. Nothing major, just stuff needing sorting. On the plus side it gave me the chance to keep tabs on the comings and goings on the garden as I came and went.

One of the spadger families, I think Team Tawny, were the visitors at dawn with a couple of blue tits in tow. The jackdaws on the rooftops were making a noise of waking up and one of the magpies was having a morning rattle from the rowan tree. A flyover pied wagtail was a nice surprise as I left the house.

There were a couple of dozen woodpigeons on the school playing field first thing. They were notably absent the rest of the day.

Spadgers enjoying the lunchtime drizzle

A couple of hours later there were a few more spadgers and a couple of great tits had come in to the feeders while a couple of collared doves, a blackbird and a woodpigeon were rummaging about in the flowerbeds. A goldcrest made a cameo appearance, attracted by the suet-filled pine cone I'd hung in the tree. As were a couple of squirrels though they couldn't quite get to grips with it.

A skein of 28 pink-footed geese flew overhead as I got home at lunchtime. Both teams of spadgers were in the garden this time and the male coal tit joined the other titmice, skipping in and out taking sunflower seeds to cache. I suspect one of the blue tits is caching food, too, something they don't do very often. The damned squirrels had chewed through the rope tying up the suet cone so I had to jam it into an old squirrel-proof feeder (the squirrels can nibble at the cone but they can't make off with it). One of the robins was busy fossicking about in the fallen leaves under the blackcurrant bushes. A couple of rooks flew overhead, they're skipping between school playing fields at the moment and not settling en masses anywhere.

Another skein of pink-feet flew overhead in the wet gloom of twilight.

• Blackbird 1
• Blue tit 3
• Coal tit 1
• Collared dove 2
• Feral pigeon 3
• Goldcrest 1
• Goldfinch 1
• Great tit 2
• House sparrow 16
• Jackdaw 4
• Magpie 2
• Pied wagtail 1
• Pink-footed goose 28+
• Robin 1
• Rook 2
• Starling 1
• Woodpigeon 1