Sniffly nose stopped play

Magpie

I woke up absolutely knackered. I've been sleeping very irregularly even by my standards lately but I spent last night mostly waking myself up with a catarrhal cough. I'd found the last stretch of yesterday's walk a bit heavy going but I'd put that down to a combination of having a few too many easy walks lately, the constant changes in the weather and my having left deep imprints of my feet on the inner soles of my boots. Perhaps it was a precursor of a cold, it's been so long since I last had one I've forgotten how they start. I took a COVID test just in case (no transmissible disease was ever eradicated by wishful thinking), got the all clear and put today's plans on ice. It would be a good idea to just go for a walk locally, steer clear of people and enclosed spaces and repeat the test tonight to make sure I was safe to be around before making any further plans.

I thought I'd do one of my lockdown walks. Then I fell asleep for a couple of hours. In the end I decided to stay put, which was a shame because it was excellent walking weather.

I'm not seeing many birds in the garden this past couple of weeks which is odd as the fat balls are disappearing at an astonishing rate. They can't all be being stolen by squirrels or demolished by magpies and jackdaws though this might account for the ones in the feeder by the blackcurrant bushes. Nor can I blame the ring-necked parakeet that I hear at least once a day, I've yet to see it actually come into the garden. So it's a mystery, the more so because the week before last the garden was chock-a-block with small birds. I've not even been hearing or seeing the sparrows at the station, they've been a fixture there for years. Ah. It bloody is the squirrels, I've just watched one do it, hauling a fifth of its body weight by its teeth the length of its body and scampering off with it across the rambling rose. It's like watching one of those Nordic musclemen pulling an articulated lorry along a beach by their eyebrows. How are they getting the lid off the feeder by the washhouse though? Just goes to show how difficult it is to squirrel proof anything.

I had wondered if the rowan berries were being left to rot this year. The blackbirds had a nibble when they first ripened but then they disappeared, leaving the tree to the woodpigeons and carrion crows before they, too, lost interest. Perhaps the uncertain weather has left the crop a bit unpalatable. A young blackbird's just come in, sampled a couple of berries and exited stage left so that sounds plausible.

The school playing field had its start-of-term crew cut and is now littered with rooks, jackdaws, magpies and woodpigeons. I wonder how long it'll take for the gulls to resume their lunchtime haunting for playground scraps. In many respects it's unfortunate for the lesser black-backs that the long school holiday coincides with peak demand from hungry mouths but the local breeding population seems to do okay without the aid of messy schoolkids.

Any road up, the second test proved negative and I'm feeling better than I did first thing so it would be no bad thing to get a bit of light exercise tomorrow. I think I'll leave the hill climbing for another day.