Lazy Sunday

Blackbird

One way or another yesterday's shenanigans caught up with me and I dozed off watching telly then dragged an aching body up to bed where I slept a straight twelve hours. I'm not Peter Pan any more. I decided to give the poor old eyes a rest today by reading and checking through my photo library, like you do if you don't have the sense you were born with.

The sparrows are back in the garden. Even if I hadn't seen them the feeders would have told the tale. I've noticed that the great tits and long-tailed tits prefer the fat balls in the feeder in the blackcurrant bushes, convenient for a quick dash back into the roses, while the coal tits prefer the feeders by the wash house with a direct line of sight to the rowan tree and a little rhododendron bush nearby to drop into if need be (the blackcurrants and rhododendron are also favoured by the dunnocks and robins). The blue tits will go to whichever the nearest feeder is that isn't covered in sparrows.

The flock of blackbirds that denuded the Pyracantha bushes at the station last week have dispersed. I've been getting two or three of them in the garden each day. I'm not sure if the males are sticking around or just passing by but the female has a particularly strikingly marked throat that makes her easy to recognise and she's been around a couple of weeks now. I wonder if she's going to be a resident or if she's just here for the Winter.

Over on the school playing field there was the usual dozen each of black-headed gulls and magpies and four rooks. There are times I'm tempted to presume they're there and just add on anything else I happen to see (at least once a week one or the other of them is missing when I go out and look, just to stop me becoming complacent). The jackdaw numbers have been a bit erratic this week but I've felt there's more than usual about. Today there were definitely more than usual about, thirty three of the noisy little beggars. I can't remember seeing that many here before.