There’s a plant that tumbles over the wall and creeps into the rosebed if you don’t keep an eye on it – with small pale blue/grey leaves that form a tightly packed mat. At the moment, there aren’t any of the white flowers that give it its name, Snow in Summer, but it clearly provides a fine source of food for a number of the smaller birds. The wren is a regular, but there is another less frequent visitor which seems to come to the garden purely to root around in the Snow in Summer, never going to the feeders or down onto the grass that I’ve seen. It is a tiny bird with a brown back, buff tummy, lemon throat and a pale stripe about its eye. I think it’s a willow warbler…the illustrations in the books for the other candidate, the chiff-chaff, don’t look look quite sleek enough but I haven’t heard it sing.
There’s also a wooden rung which braces the bird table against the fence and this afternoon, when the garden seemed empty otherwise, there was a line of three jackdaws sat on it, apparently patiently waiting their turn at the table, as a fourth ducked down to cram its head underneath the roof to get at the peanut feeder. I didn’t mean to startle them, I was just making tea and clicked down the button on the kettle.
thekitchensinkbirdwatcher 