The lawn needs cutting. The little drop of rain and my sprinkler action last week have made it grow so that the birds have to hunt through the grass for the seed, but it is also rather uneven ground and good to nestle down into and this morning a ring dove settled into a depression in a patch of sunlight. It picked a place where it could still search for food without actually having to move much, shuffling forward on its breast a few centimetres when it needed to. Every so often, it would roll onto its side and stretch out the topmost wing into the sunlight and wave it back and forth, then fold it back down and roll onto its other side to do the same. It was laid on the grass for so long, that I was beginning to worry that it was sick, but a noisy jackdaw jumping down from the rosebed and it rather flounced up into the cherry tree and then flew away.
I think that several pairs of birds are feeding nestlings. They are feeding, but also taking food away. The great tits seem to have appropriated the three-quarter coconut, chasing off anyone they find there ahead of them. Enough of the fat, seed and fruit mix has been eaten that they can disappear completely into the nut. One bird was a more cautious feeder, with a peck-and-bob-up to stare about him technique, carefully wiping its mouth on a branch after feeding, whilst another could only be seen by the top of its head. At first, I thought it might be a coal tit, from the occasional glimpses of black and white, but it finally emerged from the coconut, clearly carrying food in its mouth…and the song thrush had returned searching for worms along the base of the wall.
thekitchensinkbirdwatcher 