Lazy Sunday afternoon

Woodpigeon

Hatches were battened over Saturday but despite other parts of the country getting a hammering we just had a very windy day and windier night. Today would ordinarily have felt like a very windy day but paled in comparison. 

The sparrows have been camped out in the garden all weekend, making serious inroads on the fat feeders. The starlings had emptied the mealworm feeder by lunchtime yesterday, their messy feeding providing a bonanza for the dunnocks, blackbirds and spadgers feeding on the ground underneath. Today the main drama has involved the fat feeder near the washhouse, the bulk and buffeting of the woodpigeons trumping the beaks and chattering of the magpies. Then the woodpigeons spent so much time fighting over it between themselves the spadgers took over and weren't for being moved, numbers trumping bulk.

Spadgers

Whenever there's a storm there's a reasonable hope that some interesting gulls might be blown in and spend a bit of time on the school field, or at least the hopes of a crowd scene. Not here this weekend, just the usual dozen or so black-headed gulls and the only large gull was a chunky second-Winter herring gull yesterday afternoon. Black-headed gull numbers haven't really recovered from the avian flu outbreak last year.

I did a lightning shop for cat food (I entertained the idea of braving the December Sunday shopping crowds to get supplies in for next week for all of ten seconds). Every time I go to the Trafford Retail Park lately I see a skein or two of pink-footed geese flying overhead. Today it was twenty-nine geese flying South which suggests it wasn't one of the usual movements between the local mosslands.

It's billed to be a calm week to come so I'll have no excuse for sitting at home drinking too much tea and annoying the cat