everyone is aggressive today, the robin more than ever, dropping in on sparrows, dunnock, various tits, blackcap and even letting the blackbirds know he is around. he chased off a bemused chaffinch as well. no-one getting a feed! the bluetits hassle the coal tits, the wood pigeons have a go at each other and the collared dove who is looking really nervous.the great tit and the blackcap met in mid-air again, talons forward, beak agape but otherwise the great tits ignore it all and just fly in a circle round the robin and pinch a sunflower seed behind him and fly off.
i find the tits clever the way they take a peanut or large seed in their little beaks somehow and grasp it while they eat. the coaltit has a trick, instead of doing that, it rests a large peanut he can hardly get in his beak on a clump of moss and chips away at it.
i treated them all to raspberries, no takers.should have eaten them myself.
the sparrows can be surprisingly acrobatic, a swarm or cluster of gnats or similar appeared and the sparrows went nuts, hovering and hanging in the air, never seen that before!
i still cannot tell what the birds are that come to the twig tops everynow and again. they are pale and i never get much more of an impression than that, always in the tops and usually with bright light behind them. they have a robin type beak, not finches and not tits which i usually recognise and if the coal, blue or longtailed tits go up they flit about only a while. these others work along the highest twigs for minutes at a time then back to the lombardy poplars across the park or away. the blackcap hangs around in their company but comes down, they never do. they disappear for days at a time, usually the coldest and then come back. i have seen female chaffinch and a number of goldfinches up there but recognise them by white flashes or colour. these birds are focused on whatever they do and work along a branchlet then another. one day ...