Mists and mellow fruitfulness

willow tit
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

Whoever described September as a month of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ could have been writing about this morning. It’s a perfect late summer morning, with a hint of autumn in the air. There actually is a faint mist and a delicious chill, with the added soundtrack of woodpigeons and that wonderful rippling tic-tic-tic call of a robin that you only ever seem to notice at this time of year.

Talking of robins, one of this years’ young robins has been a regular in the garden for the last week, getting ever more red-breasted. It’s looking well on the food we’ve been putting out for it, bags of special robin food from Swillington Nurseries. It’s the best place to buy feeder food as well, just the job for our new birdfeeders. We’ve just replaced our old feeders with some nice new ones from the RSPB shop at Fairburn Ings (I get discount because I’m a volunteer - at a local mine reclamation site that’s going to become a RSPB reserve eventually, and more of that another day).

The greedy greenfinches certainly seem to approve, there’s never less than a couple on the feeders at any one time. There are plenty of collared doves picking up the dropped seed too, I’ve seen up to eight in and around the garden recently, so a good breeding season for them then. The rarest visitor lately has been a willow tit, what a great bird to see in our garden, having never seen one nearer than 5 or so miles from Garforth. Those new feeders are doing the trick.