Mayday, Mayday . . .

Following Paul’s sighting - and my hearing - a Blackcap after our impromptu lunch yesterday in the Themelthorpe back garden, I decided later to spend an hour with my new binoculars (oh alright, Linda’s new binoculars) seeing how many different bird species I could spot in or from the garden.

In one hour, between 4.30pm and 5.30:
Blackcap
Blackbird
Blue Tit
Chaffinch
Chiff Chaff (heard at first - very difficult to spot in the trees at the back)
Collar Dove
Great Tit
Greenfinch
House Sparrow
Jackdaw
Moorhen
Pied Wagtail
Robin
Starling
Swallow (the first this year)
Wood Pigeon
plus what looked like a large bird of prey flying high in a north-easterly direction; possibly a Marsh Harrier? Wings too narrow for a Buzzard or the local Honey Buzzards.

And earlier in the day:
Goldfinch
Mallard
Songthrush
Sparrowhawk
Yellow Hammer

Not bad, and although there is definitely a shortage of Starlings compared to a few years ago - as has been reported nationally - there is no shortage of House Sparrows - we have twenty to thirty living and breeding. In our nest boxes we have Blue Tits and Great Tits sitting, Sparrows nesting in the house gutters, Goldfinches in the shrubbery nearby (last year they nested in the wisteria on the front of the house) and Mallard and Moorhen with young on the pond - there were ten ducklings, now there are six, there are seven or eight little moorhens. Linda's word for it is fecund, but I think that's rude. In fact it's a fecund rude thing to say.

(PS - I've given up trying to publish pictures to Blogger and have deleted my early attempt to do a boat blog on this site; it's now only on http://lugg.blogeasy.com/)