As I wrote the September notes last year the temperature outside was 34 degrees – today it is 19 degrees! However, the birds seem to be coping, perhaps better than us. A walk on Springs Hill yesterday gave us a wheatear, a yellowhammer, a large flock of goldfinch and a smaller one of juvenile linnets. I have also had reports of a corn bunting keeping company with a flock of sparrows on the edge of Burnt Wood. A rare, reported sighting was that of a little stint, almost certainly a juvenile, on passage to Africa. The swifts have all gone in the same direction and the swallows and house martins will be off in early September. We are already seeing the swallows gathering on the overhead wires - always a sign that we are heading into late summer.
In the garden, our special sighting was to see the newly fledged wrens leaving the nest box and landing briefly to be fed by their mother before disappearing into the borders. We saw them a few times over the next ten days, but they have now dispersed.
A friend, sleeping with the window open, was woken in the early hours by the unmistakable and haunting call of a curlew heading down the valley. These are now an endangered bird, so good to know that they do pass this way at times.
Comments