of birds....

I'm sitting here in my living room with a cup of flavoured coffee and watching the sun outside my window, the river flowing by, and the birds in my little walled garden. A starling was just pulling at some of the moss on the garden wall, and some Blue Tits are currently flitting in and out of the trees.

My lease doesn't let me keep pets here, so since early winter I've been encouraging birds into my garden by putting out feeders for them, and this spring I've been trying to keep a note of the species that come visit. So far this week I've identified wood-pigeon, collard dove, blackbird, starling, blue tit, great tit, coal tit and house sparrow. There were a couple of others, but they flew away before I could get my book out to identify them!

It's interesting that the seagulls that are all around diving and flying over the river don't come into the garden - I suspect that it's too small for them with it's enclosing walls. My neighbour on the other side of the courtyard has her own private garden too, but this is not enclosed by walls, and right now the gulls are flying past my window to get at the food she's just put out. She intends it for smaller birds, but the gulls don't mind!!

There is always something to look at on the river – often just the river itself as it is quite amazing how it flows in so fast! During the winter, he flocks of birds would fly back and for the to the feeding grounds out on the Wash in the mornings and evenings: now that many of the migrants have flown north for the breading season, there are less noisy flights of birds, but there still seem to be plenty of them around, and it still causes me to stop and watch as they go by.

And all this just from sitting here looking out of my window!