She's back!

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to see this female blackbird on our lawn this morning. Until a couple of days ago, when I saw a male, I hadn’t seen a blackbird in my garden for months. During the summer I was participating in the British Trust for Ornithology’s ‘Blackbirds in Gardens’ survey which is studying the impact of the Usutu virus on blackbirds, and I was worried because I didn’t see a single blackbird for the last few weeks that the project was running. Earlier in the year I had a male and female pair visiting almost every day.

So you can imagine how delighted I was when a male came on Saturday, followed by this female today. She hopped about on the lawn for ages, and then I saw her having a bit of a spa treatment in the bird bath on the path near the feeders. She then flew up to the nearby cherry tree and shook herself dry for some minutes. Smithers was most amused to see how excited I was!