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Juvenile blackcap

It was another of those odd days for July we've been having and I had a few jobs to do that I had no intention of doing. I'd woken late for the dawn chorus, just hearing the last finale of the blackbird and the coarse repartee of the carrion crows calling down the chimney. I cat-napped awhile until the cat I was napping with explained that it was time for breakfast. By which time the blackbird was back for the second act.

The spadgers are around, I can tell by the furtive cheeping in the roses and the steady erosion of the fat balls in the feeder. I might see as many as three of them. The woodpigeons and magpies are significantly more conspicuous, the young magpies are at that irrepressible stage where they've left their parents behind and explore the world with their siblings. I hope they don't try and take liberties with the local cats, they're not all as old and rheumaticky as the one I live with. The woodpigeons seem intent on making more woodpigeons, when they're not denuding fruit bushes.

It's been the best part of a week since I've seen any of the baby blue tits or great tits. The adult male great tit's been in a couple of times, he seems to have completed his post-breeding moult, unlike the bald blue tit that made an appearance yesterday. There are two young robins about, one of which is already colouring up foxy orange on its breast. 

There have been a couple of new additions to the roll call today. I noticed a large warbler bouncing about by the living room window and took an age to work out what it was, I couldn't be sure because it was overall dull brown and kept its head under cover. It might have been a garden warbler but the odds were on its being a blackcap and so, eventually, it proved: a young juvenile blackcap that had a distinctive cap that wasn't very much different in colour to the rest of the upperparts and only hinted at the caramel brown of typical juvenile plumage. The young dunnock in the roses was considerably easier to identify.