Birdwatching

It's pretty unusual to be able to sit in the garden in a t-shirt of an evening at this time of year.

When I was young I remember deciding that I 'ought' to be able to identify birds, and I was in the Young Ornithologists Club for a while. So I learnt my garden birds pretty well, since they were what were around and easily visible, but I'm no good at the small ones who I keep seeing on moors and hills. Mainly because you really need to identify them by song, and the only ones I can do that for are cuckoos, lapwings, owls in a generic way, and chaffinches; no great achievements there. I'm working on the great tit*. I love tweet of the day, but they really need to release an album.

This evening I have seen a kite from my back door, a pair of magpies building their nest in one of those fir trees in the blip, there is a blackbird singing from one of the big trees to the right and the usual section of blue tits, great tits, and a robin.

The magpies are interesting because they are choosing quite long twigs which they are having trouble getting through the branches of the tree, but they are quite determined and clever enough to try different angles of approach. Animals - barring the YouTube clips of cats - seem to have no sense of embarrassment and will fall off/over and just get back up again and keep trying, which I applaud.


*In one of my previous lives my supervisor and one of his accomplices spent a Friday afternoon trying to find the collective nouns for tits and shags. If you ever thought that academics were highbrow, think again.