Change in the Air

There's a different feel in the air, as if change is on the way. The wind, which seems to have been in the west for ages, moved round to the east. The temperature dropped - I don't think it's gone much above 16C today. And the haar, that low, misty Scottish cloud that runs in off the sea, kept invading us, wetting everything but doing nothing to help our desperate need for some good, heavy precipitation.

We noticed it first at breakfast. The bird feeders in the front garden have had occasional use recently, but this morning they were crowded. The base of the frame that holds the feeders was busy with quarrelling chaffinches, the hoi polloi, feeding off....

....the sunflower seeds dropped by the posh birds, mainly goldfinches, which seemed only to allow siskins to join them at the feast. If the goldfinches moved away, which they did only briefly, then....

....other birds, including the dominant of the chaffinches, a greenfinch, and the siskins and coal tits, were given a few minutes at the choicest feeders.

There's no doubt about the food these birds like the most. The right-hand feeder has peanuts in it and is hardly used. The other two have sunflower kernels, and sunflower kernels are by far the most expensive. 

No flies on our birds then!

What intrigues me is where all these birds have been these last few weeks. This question applies particularly to our blackbirds. We had at least three pairs, each bringing up at least one brood, feeding in our garden. Recently we haven't seen one - not in the garden, not in the fields, not in the woods.

Where are they?