Big garden birdwatch

As ever the spadgers made themselves scarce as soon as I started recording what was in the garden for this year's Big Garden Birdwatch. Which gave the goldfinches and long-tailed tits the opportunity to linger over their meals instead of rushing in and out. 

The dunnocks were busy chasing each other round the currant bushes, the robins seemed similarly inclined, too. It's not always easy to tell the first steps in the dance from ordinary aggressive behaviour but it quickly turns into a ritualised version of the bobbing about with a puffed-up chest and doesn't finish with a punch-up even though in the early stages of pair bonding the female tends to fly off to think things over for a bit.

Over the road the three dozen black-headed gulls loafing and dancing for worms after the football match was a shadow of earlier years' totals but pretty good by recent standards. Today's large gulls were three common gulls, two first-Winter herring gulls and a first-Winter lesser black-back. I've not been seeing many rooks in this week, there was just the one today, I wonder if they're busy at work on the rookeries in the Mersey Valley. The jackdaws have spent the past week or so arguing over chimney pots. Judging by the proprietorial air of the pairs sitting on every other chimney this afternoon I think they've sorted themselves out. For now, at least.