Birds before Breakfast
Saturday, 1st January 2005
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary
Birds before Breakfast
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The thrushes are soon followed by a treecreeper which, in regular treecreeper pattern, flies from the upper boughs of the willow next door down to the bottom of our tree, creeps in increments up the trunk like a streaky mouse, follows the left fork up to the top branches, then flies off to find some other tree.
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A
good start to the year: before breakfast we have two infrequent visitors
in the crab apple tree; first a pair of mistle thrushes,
which don't come into the garden as often as the song thrush. Since they
were frosted and turned soft the crab apples have attracted more attention
from blackbirds and thrushes.
As
far as I remember this is the first time we 've seen one in our garden,
though we've seen them on the willow next door before. This weeping willow
was thoroughly pruned back in the autumn (it will soon sprout again in
the spring) and we can see that a pair of blue tits are
taking a lot of interest in the old nestbox there, which is as green with
algae as the surrounding bark.
Later,
as we set off to walk into Horbury, a starling sings
enthusiastically from the gutter at the corner of the house, a robin
more wistfully from a small tree. By the railway, long-tailed tits are
flitting like brown and white budgies through the delicate branches of
the birches while at the other side of the tracks ten or twenty blackbirds
are feasting on hawthorn berries.
On
calm water above the weir two cormorants are diving.
Richard Bell,