Floof

It was a day of extreme gardening, and extreme weather which would suddenly turn from blazing sunshine to wetting rain, and have us scrambling together the electric tools and scuttling for the shelter of house or garage. Despite all the trotting about, with R's help I managed to remodel the weeping pear tree (revealing a large rose that it had been suffocating), and was thus able to strike out another entry on the Beastly Garden List. I firmly turned my attention away from several other bits of pruning that were suddenly clamouring to be added to the bottom of the list, because today was about making it shorter, not longer.

Having finished with the tree, dodged yet another downpour, and moved the Stihl trimming kit I'd unwisely left on the garden table during the previous sunny spell to the warmth of the conservatory to begin drying out, I went back into the garden with the big camera and a long lens. I was hoping to photograph a small dragonfly that's been flitting nervously around the top of the wild garden for the past couple of days, trying to escape being noticed, and which I think is most probably one of the three Common Darters that have recently emerged from the patio pond. With bigger dragons patrolling the village its fear is understandable, but given that I hadn't yet seen an adult Common Darter in the Shire this season, I was extremely keen to get it on camera.

I was standing at the place where R and I had both seen the tricksy little guy, waiting with the patience I only ever manage to apply to this kind of endeavour... when there was a sudden flurry of wings and wittering, and a flock of at least twenty Long-tailed Tits swept into the garden and started rummaging through the trees. We've had very few small songbirds in the garden since the breeding season began, and I was absolutely charmed by them - especially when I realised that a lot of them were juveniles. As you probably know, orthithologists believe that Long-tailed Tits are doing unusually well compared with many other small bird species because outside the breeding season they live in colonies, and during breeding they go in for cooperative childcare, with non-breeders and failed breeders helping to raise the chicks of successful parents. Today it felt as though a group of adults was showing a crèche of youngsters around the village, and teaching them where to look for food. 

The flock having swept through the birches, the Lawson cypress, the Worcester iron pear tree, the pink cherry plum and the apple tree, a few of them then made a raid on the bird feeders (which happily I'd filled earlier in the morning) - all the while chatting quietly but excitedly amongst themselves. And then they were gone - over the fence and into our neighbours' garden, to see what they could find there. Out of the entire flock, this juvenile was the only one that paused long enough for me to find it with the camera and focus, and while it's not my finest work, as a record of a lovely encounter it makes me smile.

While out on a walk this evening I found and photographed a fresh Common Darter at the old village pond - but the hunt for the unidentified garden dragon goes on.