Vocal Voices

This is such a rare occurance now that we got excited this morning when we noticed a Thrush on the feeding table, I think it's the second one this year. We do get plenty of birds at the feeders and love watching their antics.

Oh lovely

I don't think I've seen a thrush in the garden here this year.

We have lots of flowering plants, including buddleja, but I've only seen two buterflies.

Our wildlife seems to be suffering in recent years,

On t'other hand, we have heard an owl hunting round here early evenings over the last two weeks, once so loud it could have been on the window-sill - Master O was complaining it drowned out his telly! Our local wildlife expert identified it as a male tawny owl and said there's quite a healthy population of them locally now.

House sparrows seem to have made a bit of a resurgance around us, and I noted a collared dove in the oak tree behind us yesterday, looking as big and fat as a turkey! A welcome reappearance, which reminds me I need to scatter some seed out on the lawn. Amongst the local magpie flocks, there's at least one jay (same family), and I've seen it close-up twice this year. And I think I spotted the resident grey heron from the local nature reserve floating over the bungalows behind our offices on Monday.

What I'm looking for now we're in a cold snap is to see if we get a flock of fieldfares in from the surrounding countryside and descending on our back gardens, as we've had in the past two years.

I don't think our colony of squirrels is a large as last year though - usually it's 4 or 5 of them, this year, so far, I've only seen a couple together.

iv got a black bird eating at an apple i threw out
never see many butterflies either
its the bad summer we had

The bees seem to have returned this year