Swift Half update - 23rd November 2010

• Its still like bleedin' bambi in the garden right now! Got back from my dawn owl ramble to find three jays in the garden, two male woodpeckers and all manner of passerines - great tits, blue tits, starlings, robins, chaffinches. Its lovely to see them all though!


• Regarding the woodpeckers - just like last year - the dominant male woodpecker seems to have a brighter red nape stripe than the less dominant male woodpecker.


• Regarding the jays, we (like all the jays I've attracted to our gardens over the years) have blue-eyed jays and brown-eyed jays. Are the jays like myself and Anna (male blue eyes, female brown eyes?) I doubt it - I get the feeling eye colour is not sex-dependent in jays - its just the jays I've seen have either blue or brown eyes and its generally the blue-eyed jays who rule the roost. If anything I get the impression that like a lot of the animal kingdom, its actually the female who is dominant!