More Songs

Result of dawn chorous watch: two blackbirds and a robin, accompanied by a background of assorted twittering. Later, a song-thrush and a greenfinch joined in. I get the feeling that song-thrushes like to perform solo, though, and as for greenfinches, do they ever shut up?!? They are fantastic personalities - almost all garden birds, in fact, are wonderful and so full of character, I just can't resist them. I'm not a fan of magpies, because they scare the other birds, or of pigeons, beccause they tend to sit in the middle of the food we've put out for smaller birds and and eat until they are almost too fat to take off. Apart from those rogues, we take great pleasure in our garden birds. Blackbirds, robins, starlings, dunnocks, sparrows, greenfinches, great and blue tits, the occasional chaffinch or wagtail, sometimes a pair of bullfinches and flocks of long-tailed tits and goldfinches. We discovered that putting raisins out attracts lots of blackbirds. In fact our garden was ruled for three years by a true Alpha male blackbird, Blackie, who soon trained us to give him raisins to order.

If he saw someone in the house, he would fly at the windows - didn't matter if you were in the bedroom, study or bathroom, he knew where you were and would flap around until you fed him! He would perch on the kitchen door handle and wait impatiently, even hopping in over the threshold if you were taking too long. If we were sitting in the conservatory, he would come and fix us with a beady stare until we caved in. He was, however, a gentleman - once the raisins were in place, he would stand back and let his missus feed first. All day long he would treat us to his loud melodic singing, especially at dusk. And he must have brought at least five lots of beautiful fledglings into the garden. I suspect he may have had two nests on the go. My mother christened him, 'The Unstoppable Sex Machine.'

Sadly, we don't see him any more. I like to think he has simply moved to pastures new, rather than died. Our most regular blackbird now is 'Father Ted', so called because of the distinctive white collar of feathers around his neck. He is a lot shyer than Blackie, though, who wouldn't stand nonsense from anyone. I still miss him!

Weather today is absolutely incredible - does it not know it's Bank Holiday? My friend is here and we've been to a craft fair - all is right with the world!