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Spagers

If I had to have to have best part of a week laid up by the lurgi I'd much rather have it in July when there's the square root of bugger all doing birdwise than the third week in October when the weather's getting interesting. We are where we are, and at least I wasn't tempted to brave the winds and put my fate in the hands of today's non-existent public transport services.

Spadgers

I knew the spadgers were out there somewhere as the feeders have been steadily denuding this past few days. The wind started to ease mid-afternoon and they all emerged, blinking, out of deep cover. It's a smaller flock than I'm used to this time of year, just a dozen birds. They've had a hard Summer and not a lot of incentive to visit, let's see if numbers resume now feeding's resumed. As well as the suet pellets and mealworms I'd put out a couscous with chickpeas and fruit which I ordinarily would have found delicious but couldn't actually swallow without inducing a coughing fit and pebble-dashing the living room. The robins and blackbirds have taken an interest. The blackbirds have also taken the last of the rowan and Pyracantha berries; bang goes my fantasy of late-Winter waxwings but I'm glad the berries got eaten in the end.

Wild, wet weather brings gulls to the school playing field. Time was, a couple of concurrent October storms would have three-figure numbers of gulls, mostly black-headed, dancing for worms. The avian flu pandemic put paid to that, numbers were knocked right back. Today's dozen black-headed gulls and a common gull is an above average appearance these days. I suspect that the hot, dry Summer hasn't done wonders for earthworm productivity on the field and it wasn't a good season for crane flies, either, so the three or four rooks that visit only spend a couple of hours feeding on leatherjackets before moving on.