The spadgers are in quiet mode, which is a good sign that there are nests with eggs. It's not often I see more than one in the garden, and most of the time I'm not even seeing that. Once the eggs hatch and there are mouths to feed the sycamores and fruit bushes will be busy with spadgers collecting aphids to feed them and coming to the feeders regularly to get something for themselves. The hens are in and out to the feeders without breaking cover as they snatch a very quick bite before resuming incubation. The cocks are hardly in at all, a couple of the older lads coming along to check everything out for a few minutes. Which reminds me, I must refill the bird baths.
The singers aren't in quiet mode. The blackbird kicks in at four and is joined an hour later by the robin. That's usually my cue to finally doze off. The collared doves, woodpigeons, blackcap, wren and dunnock tend to start singing nearer six o'clock. During the day both the blackbird and the robin are quiet most of the time but have half-hour sessions of almost continuous song around ten, two and six, with occasional apparently random cameo appearances. The other singers, particularly the wren and the dunnock, lean towards random cameos throughout the day. The great tit doesn't get involved in the dawn chorus and just goes for cameos. The extreme form of this is the mistel thrush, which seems to have a huge territory about a mile square. He'll sing in the trees on the embankment or by the school playing field about once a week. We're marginal territory, the core of his activity is the park and the trees by the warehouse next to it. Some years we will be in the centre of a mistle thrush territory, with the birds nesting in the older, bigger trees down the road, but this isn't one of those years.
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