Home thoughts

The past couple of weeks I've noticed I've gotten into the habit of starting each post with a review of the weather which is, in part, a reflection of how unreliable it's been even though we haven't had much in the way of very heavy rain or very dour weather, unlike the beginning of the month. It does feel like Spring even if that is, still, a very cold wind. We keep being promised: "It'll be warm next week," and we'll see.

I'm seeing more of the female spadgers this week which tells me there are mouths to be fed back at the nests. Some years I'll be seeing youngsters by now, they may well be amongst the rustling in the rambling rose leaves and I've just not spotted them yet. I've seen the female great tit more often, too, so hope to be seeing some of theirs soon. The blue tits are still being furtive and you'd not think there were coal tits about, this is par for the course and I just have to be patience and wait for the inevitable yellow-faced balls of fluff to turn up.

The male robins have resumed singing, which I usually assume means that the first brood of the year is on the go. The blackbirds have never stopped singing. As feared the garden warbler was a passing stranger though the blackcap's become a daily fixture.

Each evening there's a thin passage of lesser black-backs going to roost on Salford Quays. There's usually one or two floating about during the day and they've been being joined by a few herring gulls at school lunch times. They've even learned not to bother on Saturdays and Sundays.

There's a stray pair of carrion crows bobbing about. One pair is, I think, nesting in the old crow's nest near the old library. I think the stray pair are the young birds that build a nest by Barton Road last year but didn't seem to do much with it. This year they've started building a nest a few branches up from the occupied magpies' nest in the flowering pear tree across the road. There was must rattling in the foliage at first but things seemed to have settled down. If there's going to be a soap opera of it I hope the leaf cover doesn't obscure the drama.