Robin

Wifie and I spent a couple of days this week working on my father's back garden, taming the overgrown shrubs, sweeping up last year's dead leaf litter and revealing more garden gnomes and other concrete ornaments.

There isn't a lot of wildlife in the garden, but this robin kept us company while we were working, taking advantage of the worms, spiders and other invertebrates disturbed by the gardening.

This morning I was taking photos over the fence of the neighbour's magnificent sunflower. Meanwhile the robin was clicking away nearby, and as I turned round there he was behind me. It was quite a coup to get a picture of a bird this close, all my other bird pictures are little dots in landscapes, the best I can normally do without a telephoto. Serendipity. I was pleased too that this wasn't the usual pose for a robin.

Dad departed on his Mediterranean cruise at lunchtime, and we are heading home on Saturday (in fact I am writing this retrospectively now at home). After he left we drove down through the New Forest to Lymington, and I walked from there along the coastal footpath to Keyhaven. It was the warmest and sunniest day of the week, a return to summer weather. Yet autumn passage is clearly underway for the migrant birds, there were large numbers of sand martins feeding over the lagoons, lots of wheatears on the sea wall, and a few whinchats perched along fences.

I saw more wader species than I have seen all year, including grey plovers, turnstones, curlew sandpipers, greenshanks and knots. I had a couple of good views of kingfishers feeding in the ditches behind the sea wall. The best find for me though was a pair of dartford warblers, it's a few years since I have seen one, and I didn't know they were found here.

We rounded the day off with a pint and a meal in the Gun Inn in Keyhaven, then went back to Dad's house to watch a DVD of The English Patient on what is the largest television I have ever seen.