Today I spent a lot of time staring out of the window of my office. It’s really just a spare bedroom with a table and computer, but “office” sounds better. I don’t know how builders get away with calling these rooms bedrooms – I don’t even need to extend my arms fully to touch both sides. It’s a single monastic cell of a room, somewhere to put an unwelcome visitor who will be happy to leave after a couple of nights of claustrophobia.

It looks out onto a cheerless narrow strip of garden, with a fence that needs painting. The neighbour was nailing new roof felt onto a small garden store he has crammed between his garage and the fence. It was alarming to see a head pop up over the fence,a nd socially awkward. We haven’t introduced ourselves yet and we both avoided looking at each other.  I doubt it will happen again, but may adjust my blind to make myself less visible.

Magpie

Anyway, before that happened, I had ten minutes watching a magpie on his garage roof. It appeared to be sorting through moss looking for food. I must look it up and see if anyone else has seen this. I’m surprised there is anything in the moss, to be honest. I’m also a little offended that we have plenty fo bird food and it wasn’t even making an attempt to eat it. They don’t even seem to want to explore the possibilities of the floor feeder, which has included old scone, apple cores, seeds and suet over the last few days.

The squirrel, meanwhile, has been up to all sorts of trick to raid the seeds. It has eaten from the floor feeder, making us hope it will leave the seeds alone, but it always seems to try for the seeds again.

Julia saw a Jay in nearby trees yesterday. I like Jays. Before Mum and Dad moved to this bungalow they had a house a couple of miles away and had as many as three Jays feeding in the garden at one time. We actually turned up to do the RSPB Bird Count one weekend and found three Jays in the garden. (We used to do the count in their garden as they got better birds than we did. We nearly had a sparrowhawk one year, but it perched next door and refused to come to our garden so Julia wouldn’t let me count it.

My bird photography still needs work, so these are pictures I have used before.

A mischief of Magpies