Lazy day

For the first time in a week I managed to sleep through the dawn chorus. I'd hoped this might put a bit of fire back in the engine but apparently not, it was one of my more listless days (listless is my default setting). 

I tried to work out how many pairs of woodpigeons there are locally and gave up on it: there are six definite pairs and two probables that might be love triangles, three unescorted singing males and fifteen or sixteen flying about in various configurations as the mood takes them. The rooks have all disappeared into the Mersey Valley and the ginormous rookery off Bradley Road. The jackdaws are mostly paired up and I think it's my chimney's turn again for one of the nests. I'm not sure what the crows are up to, a pair is splitting their time between the station and the old library where they nested last year.

The magpies made an early start on nest-building, changed their minds and waited for the Spring weather. I've noticed two definite working nests down our street so far. The one in the roadside flowering pear tree seems to have been given up on as a nest but is still used as an overnight roost. There hasn't been a repeat of the mad nest-building frenzy by adolescent magpies at Trafford Park Station the other year. In fact I haven't seen any nest-building at all there even though there's usually at least one pair of magpies around.

Aside from the singing there's not a lot of evidence of nest-building by the small birds but then I make a point of not going round looking for the nests so as not to disturb them. The coal tits have gone missing but they weren't around much over Winter and only a couple of times as a pair so I'm pretty pessimistic about them breeding here this year. The blackbirds, blue tits and great tits are paired up though it isn't often the blue tits come to the feeders together. I'm very rarely seeing the dunnocks, which is a worry. The spadgers, of course, keep on a-spadgering and the first I'll know of their breeding activities will be a line of fledglings sitting on the fence being escorted to the feeders by one of the older males.

Over on the school playing field, in between sessions of schoolchildren being shouted at by P.E. teachers, the jackdaws, magpies and woodpigeons have taken over from the gulls. Most days a few black-headed gulls drift in with the larger gulls for the lunchtime frenzy but they're not sticking around for long. The shift into Summer has started and the lesser black-backs are starting to outnumber the herring gulls and most mornings there'll be half a dozen lesser black-backs loafing on the field first thing.