Black-tailed godwits, Leighton Moss

Monday, 5 August 2024

Home thoughts

I'd had three hours' sleep and the alarums and excursions of the night extended unto lunchtime so I shelved the plan for the day, which is just as well as I had eyes like peepholes in the snow. (They all lived happily ever after in the end.) 

Mid-morning brought three new, spotty and scruffy blackbirds to the back garden where they made a performance of taking a bath under the supervision of the adult male before lurching up into the rowan tree to make a worse first of grabbing berries by the beakful than I would have done. The young great tits have white cheeks now though their napes and wings still have yellow tones. I know there are young wrens about more by instinct than observation, the male's not sung for a few days though he's still on the alert patrolling the garden, especially when there are magpies about.

  • Blackbird 4
  • Carrion crow 1
  • Collared dove 2
  • Feral pigeon 1 
  • Great tit 2
  • House sparrow 4
  • Jackdaw 2
  • Magpie 2
  • Robin 1 
  • Woodpigeon 4
  • Wren 1

The gulls have sussed that the lunchtime banquet's suspended for the Summer holidays. The lesser black-backs pass over in the evenings as they go off to roost but are absent during the day. Today there were just five black-headed gulls dancing for worms on the playing field, joined by three adult herring gulls. The crowd scenes were provided by the jackdaws.

  • Black-headed gull 5
  • Feral pigeon 3
  • Herring gull 3
  • Jackdaw 18
  • Rook 7
  • Woodpigeon 6

No comments:

Post a Comment