Swift Half update - 1st February 2011

Click photo twice to see at largest size.

• The local starling roost continues, although we're down to maybe a couple of hundred birds max now.


• Goldfinches have begun to belt out courtship songs for the first time this year (rather than just squabbling noisily).


• The blackbirds are fighting.


• Even a song thrush is singing from our neighbours' leylandii tree - a real treat and not seen from Swift Half before this year. (See my youtube video here)


• Blue tits and magpies seem paired up already.


• Just like the local waterbirds on the Thames - the passerines and garden birds seem intent on getting their mates early.


• Even the dunnocks (who generally do not pair -being the "swingers" of the bird world, and rather fond of threesomes etc...) seem to be in a fragile pair at present.


• This afternoon I photographed our female hawk eat one of our fighting cock blackbirds on our neighbours garden fence - she's stunning you know.