Mugshots

Blue tit

This feathered hooligan is very given to tapping on windows to catch spiders. At the moment all the spiders' webs are on the outside because I had a passing moment of housekeeping.

Blue tit

The same bird as above a bit more relaxed so the feathers on the head aren't so fluffed up. The moult into fresh Autumn plumage isn't quite complete, there are still white feathers to come behind the eyes.

Great tit

The great tits always announce their arrival. The blue tits and spadgers can be around for ages before any of them make a sound. The usual first sound from the spadgers is the senior bird calling everyone back to cover.

Spadgers
For some reason this reminds me of that famous photo of Butch Cassidy and The Wild Bunch.

The two old troupes have split up and coalesced afresh so this group includes both silver-cheeked and tawny individuals. The three cocks left of centre are a couple of years old and come from the tawny troupe. They have a yellowish cast to their lead-grey underparts and cheeks. The cock in the bottom left-hand corner shows the bright light grey underparts that was a feature of the silver troupe. The variations in the hens are a lot subtler, the silver troupe had a tendency to include paler birds with more uniform upperparts and occasional white tail feathers (there was one I've not seen for a while that had one half of its tail white). The uniformly beige hen sparrow that was around a few years ago was in this group. Old silver cheeks is top centre with his back to us.

There's a gratifying number of young birds here. The bird third left is a juvenile cock moulting into first-Winter plumage, he's got his grey cap and his black bib is limited to his throat. Older cock sparrows get bigger bibs. There's a very young-looking hen sparrow to the left of old silver cheeks, the last batch of fledglings turned up last month.

Some of the other birds from the two old troupes have joined the group based at the station. That seems to include the two dark iron-grey cock sparrows. It's quite a fluid situation still and the territories, insofar as they bother having them, overlap at the station entrance. I've still not worked out if the birds near the bus stop by the old library are a separate group to the one at the station. I suspect they are but they're more often heard than seen so I've not been able to try and identify any individuals.