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Jan. 4th, 2007 04:31 pmIt was definitely a less melodic journey this morning, probably because the wind had got up in the night and it was still pretty gusty. For a while, I thought that the only accompaniment to my walk to the bus stop was going to be a dog barking in the distance and a van reversing in a nearby street. However, two or three geese (probably greylag or canada) honked from the direction of the pond, proving that there was wildlife out there somewhere. A new cat almost decided to greet me but then bolted away at the last moment, where the footpath darts between two houses to join two no-through-roads. It was small and black-and-white, and I as it ran away saw a white patch tilted across the back of its head, like a small hat. A blackbird flew into a nearby hedge, and I heard sparrows again, this time near another favourite sparrow haunt: a 1930s semi with some loose boards around the eaves. Something was twittering in the trees from the other side of the main road but I couldn't work out what it was, although it sounded encouragingly spring-like. I'm not really sure what I should be listening out for at the moment, partly because I've never really tried noticing before the time of year at which different birds start singing for territory and mates, and partly because this has been such a warm winter (mainly) that I'm not sure the birds would be performing to schedule anyway.
As the bus passed over the bridge over the river, I saw two flocks of small grey gulls* wheeling and settling over the soggy ground either side of the river. There must have been hundreds of gull there, their feathers just catching the early morning light. I don't think I've seen them in such numbers around here before.
At the station, more gulls, the inevitable feral pigeons battling the wind, and a couple of crows.
I checked the bird songs and calls I'd heard yesterday, and managed to identify one definitely as a blue tit. That's quite an obvious song - 'tsee-tsee-tsee', followed by a lower trill and a 'tseep' - so I'm not sure how I came to forget whose it was. I suspect that the 'chaffinch' I heard was actually a treecreeper, given that it sounded faster than the chaffinch example on the bird sounds CD and I know there are treecreepers in those trees. It was heard through moderate traffic, so I'm not certain of what I heard in any case.
*Probably black-headed gulls, but I wasn't there long enough to see properly. I really ought to get better at identifying gulls, incidentally: black-headed gulls are easy but I'm far from sure that everything I've labelled as a herring gull actually was.
As the bus passed over the bridge over the river, I saw two flocks of small grey gulls* wheeling and settling over the soggy ground either side of the river. There must have been hundreds of gull there, their feathers just catching the early morning light. I don't think I've seen them in such numbers around here before.
At the station, more gulls, the inevitable feral pigeons battling the wind, and a couple of crows.
I checked the bird songs and calls I'd heard yesterday, and managed to identify one definitely as a blue tit. That's quite an obvious song - 'tsee-tsee-tsee', followed by a lower trill and a 'tseep' - so I'm not sure how I came to forget whose it was. I suspect that the 'chaffinch' I heard was actually a treecreeper, given that it sounded faster than the chaffinch example on the bird sounds CD and I know there are treecreepers in those trees. It was heard through moderate traffic, so I'm not certain of what I heard in any case.
*Probably black-headed gulls, but I wasn't there long enough to see properly. I really ought to get better at identifying gulls, incidentally: black-headed gulls are easy but I'm far from sure that everything I've labelled as a herring gull actually was.
