Reflective and melancholy.
The afternoon shift draws to an end. Tired. Weeding and shrub pruning. Arisings composted or dead-hedged. Stepping carefully around snowdrops.
We are making good progress. Sian and Paul gave us a day yesterday and doubling our workforce seemed to more than double our output.
Dusk drawing out now. Light until five pm. No bats, even though a mild 12C. Bats are said to fly at this temperature.
Sitting, listening after cleaning tools and tidying as birds go to roost.
A very busy troop of long-tailed tits. Trilling. Perhaps half a dozen, possibly more. Highly animated as they move to their communal roost.
A single mistle thrush high in one of the sycamores. Sometimes throstle. Sometimes storm cock due to it singing from the top of a tree defying the rain and wind. Rattling call. Song of four or five note lines rarely repeated. The song drifts around the trees. Reflective and melancholy.
Our song thrush also singing more-distantly down in the Cedar Walk. Yesterday singing from the very top of a Douglas Fir until dark.
And a ‘murmuration’ of six starlings. Circling tightly together before submerging into one of our neighbours’ huge, dense conifers. Another once-common bird reduced to appearing in the red list of birds of conservation concern along with song and mistle thrushes.