December 4 2001

There is unbelievable activity in the back garden for the last hour or so. Birds are flying all over the place; back and forth, up and down, in and out, chasing each other by the new time. But they are all confining their chasings to their own species. So far in the last hour I've seen of course the blackbirds, a thrush, a whole family of chaffinches, a robin and a juvenile robin, cole tits, blue tits and great tits, the usual sparrows and magpies and a stranger who went through so fast that I didn't get a chance to see what he was though I might have got enough of a glimpse to find him in my bird book. I must have a look.