Scorchio

Dunnock

It was another warm day with a high pollen count and the cricket was enticing so I didn't bother with a walk today. I got the day's exercise lugging the weekly shop plus my father's shopping back from Davyhulme where the pigeons were staying in the shade and the usual ones and twos of lesser black-backs and black-headed gulls cruised about. As I walked down to the retail park a chiffchaff sang from the trees by the brook on Barton Road and I had a pang of envy. I won't be getting chiffchaffs back in my garden until the Autumn passage. Waiting for the bus on my way home there was a flurry of excitement as all the pigeons took to the air and a flock of jackdaws flew from the housing estate on Kingsway Park. The female sparrowhawk cruising at chimney pot height proved to be the culprit.

Juvenile robin

Back home the rowan berries are ripe and the young blackbirds are making a clumsy fist of picking them. The adult robins have finished their moult but are still keeping a low profile, the two youngsters are busy throwing their weight about in the blackcurrant bushes. I'm not sure if we've had one or two young dunnocks, that family's very fidgety when they emerge from the undergrowth. It doesn't seem to have been a bumper year for spadgers, I've not seen more than four youngsters at a time but so far there have been three waves of them so I guess the population's stable. The collared doves and woodpigeons are a mystery, they've spent all year singing and chasing each other through the trees but I've had no youngsters in the garden and have only seen a handful of juvenile woodpigeons on the school playing field on the occasions when a big flock has turned up to browse. End of school year sports days have limited that this week. The gulls seem to have twigged that it's the end of the school year: only the one lesser black-back turned up to scavenge at lunch break.

End of day this week has been typified by a dusk chorus of blackbirds and woodpigeons while one of two swifts wheel about and a steady traffic of lesser black-backs passes overhead to roost at Salford Quays, the occasional youngster calling all awhile to keep in contact with its parents.