Twilight

It's not been a bad weekend. The weather's been a bit up and down (OK then, a lot up and down - very warm yesterday afternoon, cool evening, bright sunny Sunday morning, torrential rain at lunchtime, another cool evening). England scratched a draw against the Aussies despite it all. Lancashire beat Worcestershire by seven wickets and a day to spare. I've been making a pig of myself with fruit from the garden, and not yet into the pear, plum and apple season. The rowan's looking like there'll be plenty for jelly this year and a good bout of sunshine in August is all that's needed for a feast of figs. The geraniums are mostly gone over, just providing a huge carpet of downy leaves in various shades of green and red. The pelargoniums have just started flowering and look very promising. As do the new carnations and pinks (I ordered a pile of very old varieties for to put into hanging baskets and containers on the patio). The garden's messy and a bit neglected but it's mostly fun in its way. Even if the slugs have eaten all the vegetables.

The goldfinches are on their second broods now. I'm not sure if the pair of fledglings that have been sitting on the outhouse roof this afternoon are this pair's first or second lot. Last year we got three broods. I think largely because I provided about two ton of niger seed for them. It's looking that way again this year. I also seem to be feeding a couple of dozen starlings, though it looks like they don't like the "Berry Essence" fat cakes (all the other flavours struggle to last a day). The wrens have been nesting in the brambles on the embankment again. Back in the days when the garden was more open I used to have the treat of seeing the wrens taking the new bods out for their first forays. These days there's so much cover I seldom get to see them, which in many respects is a shame but is rather safer for all concerned. The cock wren is often in evidence, he particularly likes foraging his way through the hanging baskets and the tree heathers. The blue tits and great tits are nesting behind the garages down the road. They've not been overly productive this year: already I'm being visited by a mixed flock of a pair of great tits and two juvenile blue tits, which suggests that it's been a poor year and the great tits have given up.

The adult robins aren't much in evidence lately, with the cock only singing at dawn, which suggests they're busy. I am getting a regular visit from one of their youngsters though. My garden traditionally is an overlap area between two robin territories, it isn't that unusual to see two pairs on the feeders. This time of year it becomes a temporary territory-in-miniature for the juveniles. It gets a bit fractious in the early autumn when the moult's completed and they all notice each others' red breasts and bad tempers.

I'd started to wonder about the robins as even they couldn't have been shifting mealworms at the rate they were going. Sure enough, it turns out that the collared doves have figured how to use the worm feeders. It isn't quite as ridiculous as the wood pigeons dangling upside down on the fat feeders.