Outside at this moment blackbirds are sounding persistent warnings and trying to fend off squirrels (I think) in a nearby tree, we’ve got some cocky squirrely youngsters who’re also raiding the bird food. Which is also going down at an alarming rate as we are host to hordes of greenfinch, bullfinch, chaffinch and various tit fledgies.
Earlier four or five buzzards, probably youngsters (the underwing markings were not so definite), were exploring the thermals, loop the looping and making daring low level forays over the garden until a grumpy carrion crow decided to spoil their fun and see them off.
Last night two tawny owl youngsters in nearby oak trees were rustily “sfweeping” in competition presumably for parental food. I gave up watching for an incoming silhouette as the daylight turned down and the moon got brighter. One night last year we had a youngster right by the house that went on and on, and on, until finally a parent turned up with a frog offering.
The magpies continue to run egg forays and it’s their excited yakking and ratattating that now alerts me to the possibility that the chickens have laid, 3 – 0 to me today, 1 – 1 to the magpies yesterday.
The evening light makes the towering white foxgloves glow briefly and then fade out reminding me of a Tove Jansson Midsummer Madness moomin illustration. Soon the foxgloves will have had their time, the gloves are dropping one by one accompanied by the trumpet amplified buzzing of bees.
Scent is starting to build as I walk out from the back door, heliotrope, brugmansia, nemesia, honeysuckle and sweet pea Matucana, a heady mix.
But damn the bl***y mole, the courgette plants were all undermined today and wilting in the sun, newly planted iris set all askew and rings run around plants whose soil I stamped down yesterday.