Lazy day

Yes, I know the back garden needs tidying up

After the dry cold of yesterday it poured down overnight and today was mild and very damp. Oddly, it felt milder before dawn when I was running an errand than at lunchtime when I was running another, or perhaps I was feeling the damp air the more. Yesterday's easy walking was today's hobbling like somebody had stuck snooker cues up my trousers legs. I debated trying to walk the stiffness out but lacked the motivation to do so. It's easier in January when the year list is in its teens.

Another long-tailed duck did a quick local pit stop, this one was at High Rid Reservoir last night and not this morning, which paradoxically came as a bit of a relief. I suspect if I bump into one at all this year it'll be by accident when I'm looking for something else.

No blackcap in the back garden today, though there's every possibility I overlooked it. There's still just enough leaf cover on the rowan for titmice to go missing when they fly up from the feeders and plenty enough on the railway embankment sycamores to hide a flock of long-tailed tits, which happened a couple of times this morning. The titmice and sparrows have made huge inroads on the bird food though I suspect the squirrels account for most of the sunflower seeds now they've worked out the squirrel-proof feeders. I'm seeing more woodpigeons locally, ones and twos but a definite drift back, but not yet in the garden or the school playing field. In contrast, the collared doves and jackdaws are paired up and billing and cooking.

A mild, damp day would suggest a crowd of gulls on the school playing field but today the highest count was ten black-headed gulls and all the large gulls are flyovers. There's a definite change in the use of this field by gulls over the past twenty years, the large pre-roost flocks of black-headed gulls just aren't happening any more.