Lazy day

Juvenile great tit
When I hung that cone up on Sunday it was white with suet.

The thunderstorm we hoped might relieve the heat turned up at 5am and did little except make the air more humid and put the collared doves off singing. By lunchtime traces of the downpour could be found in the deep shade under rhododendrons if you looked hard enough. The birds weren't much easier to see out there, either. The young great tits hogged the suet cones as the house sparrows were disinclined to come out of the bushes for any great length of time.

House sparrow on its way between next door's ivy and my boysenberries

I listened to the cricket but come teatime I had to take my chances with the weather — and the trains — to get the weekly shop done. Having written off the blackcap earlier in the week there it was singing in a neighbour's garden while I waited to see if the advertised train was turning up or was joining the many cancellations. And then, just as I was muttering to myself about the train having been due in seven minutes' time for the past fifteen, there were two blackcaps, singing at each other from opposing platforms. (Please don't get any grand ideas about the station, it's very much like something your handyman uncle would knock together in his shed from a pile of wooden pallets and some old scaffolding.) Anyway, the 1723 rebranded itself as the 1754 and was running ten minutes late so I'd be lucky to get ten minutes' shopping in before I'd have to run back for the train home and find out it's been cancelled. 

I gave up and got the bus into Davyhulme to get the shop done there instead. A blackcap was singing from the sewage works as I walked by. On the way home I had to get the 250 and walk back through the park. Two blackcaps were duelling either side of the path from St Modwen Road. Sadly, there was still neither sight nor sound  of whitethroats on my local patch.

BartonCloygh

Despite the weather being a lot more clement by the time I got home I was too done in to do tonight's planned stroll. I'll be glad if/when we strike some happy medium between being frozen to the marrow and sitting by a blast furnace.