Highlight of the year birdwise was this cuckoo on 1st may. Seemed extraordinary… in continuous rain I kept thinking I could hear cuckoo from the studio, but couldn’t believe it… thought it might be someone playing around with speakers. Took a very long time to track it down to the top of beech tree, well hidden in the canopy. It was there all day, presumably grounded by the rain. With so much focus on African migrants earlier in the year it seemed all the more amazing that this bird would probably have been in the Congo a few weeks earlier.

cuckoo singing in beech in heavy rain – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

swifts – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

swifts arrived over house on 3rd may
I trot out to look each time the herring gulls make a particular alarm call that says there is a raptor overhead. Usually it is a buzzard coasting over… peregrines have usually shot straight through with a flock of pigeons floundering in their wake…but occasionally watched spiralling high.  Just once (or twice?) a kite drifting eastwards towards Bath in a purposeful kind of way.
Surprisingly little that I can think of to note down about the smaller birds. Finches have deserted our bird table… I did have one lovely eyeful of greenfinch male feeding on borage… zinging green, yellow & blue but never making it to the paintbrush.
Goldfinches are ever present at least in the ears… often up in the tops of beech, birch or larch… also making use of the great variety of seeding plants up on the allotments.
Willow warblers make their fleeting appearance in early april (6th i noted), coinciding with the air drizzling green.
Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps are around… Blackcaps all year now.
Green woodpecker is often on the allotment and I’m nurturing ant hills for their benefit. Great spots are in the garden.

green woodpecker – ink pen – A6 sketchbook

We still have masses of sparrows, though there is a season (late summer?) where they disappear and I think we may have lost them… but then they come back in mid winter (?).