Drat - MIssed It!

Not long before I dragged myself out of bed to do the Garden Bird Watch for the umpteenth time, we had a visit from our local friendly sparrow hawk. Had I seen it, it would have signalled the start of my hour gazing out of the window while eating chocolate biscuits and drinking coffee. As it was, when I went into the shed to fill up the bird feeders, I found a wren trapped inside; instead of battering itself against the window to escape, it sensibly chose to part my hair on its way out through the door. That was the signal to crack open the packet of biscuits.
 
Like the hawk, we know we have at least one wren living in our garden, it’s just that we rarely see more than a brown streak as it passes from one hiding place to another; today, I had a good enough view to convince myself it should be recorded.
 
Bearing in mind that we have three active building sites within a few hundred yards of our garden with another three being prepared, not to mention next door having their roof replaced by too many men to be able to observe social distancing while shouting instructions to one another (“Out of my bloody way, Cecil!”) and dropping scaffolding planks on to our patio (that was on Friday), we had a successful bird count. Gone are the days when I photographed the sparrows, jackdaws, rooks, starlings and goldfinches as there were too many who wouldn’t stay still to be counted live, but we still managed 32 individuals from fourteen different species without resorting to counting either the hawk, or its breakfast.