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| 7
p.m. Goldfinches on the niger; I filled the
feeder this morning and it's down to a third now. |
The pheasants
are at home in the garden these days. We even had one in the front
garden today, alongside the pavement on the heather bed. |
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| Greenfinches
are more frequent visitors to the bird feeders than sparrows. They're
most often on the sunflower feeder but will often go for the niger
too. |
A wood
pigeon swoops into next door's garden. When one lands on
our feeder it makes the slim metal pole shake and it more than fills
the mesh feeder tray when it lands there to fill its crop every evening. |
 A
blackbird sings from next door's shed, then moves to
a song post on the roof. His signature phrase has a rhythm like this:
When- I - get stood - here - sing-ing,
I - keep - it - up for hours.
 Or,
as it seems to be in an English folk song tradition:
T'was ear-ly - in - the - morn-ing,
I start-ed - off - this song.
And, boy, can he keep it up.  It's
similar to a nursery rhyme that I vaguely remember which went something
like:
A farm-er - went - out walk-ing,
He took - his - gun along.
Imagine; if Paul McCartney had been inspired by this particular
blackbird singing in the dead of night how different his song might have
been:
I heard a blackbird singing,
T'was in the dead of night,
With these broken wing-ings
He didn't make the flight.
He'd never have got that knighthood. 
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk
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