An early morning cup of tea on the patio. Swallows, assorted garden finches and tits. Jackdaws chaking above the field.
Suddenly, a small bird flits out of the shrubs, then flits back in again. I know instantly it’s something different. Something about its jizz. I nip inside to grab my camera in case it returns. It does indeed, shooting up into the cherry tree. Even before I manage to focus on it, I’m thinking willow warbler. There was definitely a hint of olive green as it flew. Or perhaps it’s a chiffchaff. Very hard to tell apart, especially if you can’t see the legs—which, as seems nearly always to be the case, I can’t.
I’m hanging out for willow warbler. A common enough bird, but rare in our garden. Only my second, in fact.
A nice start to the day.
“…wonderfully droll, witty and entertaining… At their best Carter’s moorland walks and his meandering intellectual talk are part of a single, deeply coherent enterprise: a restless inquiry into the meaning of place and the nature of self.”
—Mark Cocker, author and naturalist
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