Near miss

..or perhaps I should say, 'near Mr?'

Another ridiculously beautiful day, but one in which I went for a rather brief walk - nothing like the leg-stretch of yesterday.  So this blip was obviously taken very close to home, just round the side of the football club in fact.

And there I was meandering along, thinking of something else, when this male house sparrow (passer domesticus) came haring out of the brambles and exploded in my face.  I don't know who was more shocked, him or me.  Still, he didn't bother to fly away again, just settled on a twig and thought about it.  Looks like there's quite a few of them living there, which is nice as they're another species that's suffered a horrible decline in numbers.  They're beginning to recover now, but are still on the IUCN Red List of threatened species.  If you're interested in 'sparrow history' there's a great piece here.  We once gave prizes for killing them and even used to eat them, apparently!

Now, 'nuff of that, because I forgot to put up the list of hearts and hon mentions for WFW20_05 yesterday.  Tut tut!  Seriously, sorry for the hopelessness.

For the 5th WildFlowerWeek challenge of 2020, hearts and hon mentions as follows:
HEARTS (to be awarded later tonight) go to:
Ann
steveng
movableparts
Puffin
lisabet
and HON MENTIONS to:
Freuchie
JudyD
SeasideSusie
HilarysView
RavensRoost
Treshnish
..and my thanks to you all for your wonderful entries

Have a good evening, dear peeps  xx