Summary May 2013
On the 8th May we saw four House Martins (the first for the year for us) starting to nest under the eaves of one of the new flat blocks opposite the Thai restaurant. We saw one nest but at least two other birds were also to-ing and fro-ing so I expected to see more nests later in the week but there was still just the one the next time I looked. They used to nest above Thai Spice.
Garden
May still did not mark Spring or Summer and the weather remained uncertain and was often cold. We have several Blackbirds and a Robin and a Dunnock are regular visitors. We sometimes have a couple of Starlings but the number of Tits and especially Goldfinches is way down. It is hard to conclude anything else than that the birds suffered very badly with a long cold winter that doesn’t seem to have turned into Spring yet ! The only exception to this is the is Woodpigeon and Collared Dove that are still all too common in the Garden. We did see two Mistle Thrushes over the garden which seemed odd this late in the year. Towards the end of the month they actually came into the garden and were feeding from the ground feeder. For some reason we have been having visits from a couple of House Sparrows from across the ginnel which isn’t that usual despite their close proximity. We found a dead Great Tit near one of our bird baths so it looks like another cat attack. Around the third week of the month we started to see a few Swifts flying around overhead but, again, not as plentiful as previous years.