It's a strange thing but today was the first time in twenty-three years I haven't seen any house sparrows in the garden. All week there's been at least a dozen in the fruit bushes all day, not today. Nor did I see them on the feeders, which gave the titmice, including the now-regular female coal tit, a free ride on the sunflower seeds. Almost certainly they've been around but just not when I've been looking, they're fairly quiet this time of year (by their standards) so I don't always get the aural cues to look up and out.
On the subject of missing elements I haven't been seeing the collared doves this week. I don't know if they move on the same way that the woodpigeons evidently do. Perhaps they've been elsewhere profiting from a local plenty, it seems to be a good year for beech mast in the Mersey Valley. The collared dove singing down this chimney this afternoon was the first since the eleventh.
A couple of woodpigeons were feeding on the school playing field with a crowd of jackdaws and magpies this afternoon. With all the rain we've had lately and with it being Autumn and all I'd normally expect a flock of black-headed gulls worm-dancing on the field, there was just the one today. They haven't reached double figures yet this month. Perhaps the structure of the field has changed somehow so there's fewer worms but still plenty of insects for the corvids. Perhaps the avian flu's to blame. Or perhaps the gulls are as confused by the weather as the rest of us. There's a lot that doesn't feel quite right lately.
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