Siskins, and the (almost) death of a squirrel

Siskins are very messy feeders, so two visiting town pigeons were overjoyed this morning to feast on the abundance of sunflower kernels dislodged and dropped by the single male siskin that had monopolised our feeding station. Siskins nest nearby, so I hope for a repeat before long of last year's delight - a garden filled with playful young siskins. Just the one male at the moment, though, as a regular visitor. Tiring of the sunflower seeds, he flew across to one of the ornamental cherries, where he was swiftly rebuffed and despatched by the argumentative great tits that were engaged on an insect hunt there.

It's been wet overnight, and the spider webs that, despite my best efforts, festoon the posts and railings of our patio, are bright with raindrops this morning. The first bird to catch my eye, even before the siskin, was a song thrush, hopping brazenly up the path toward the patio as though he owned the place. I don't often see song thrushes in our garden, though they're frequently singing not far away.  One of my childhood memories is of the time a song thrush adopting a large seaside pebble I'd brought home and placed in my little bit of our garden, as its regular anvil, on which to smash the shells of snails it had captured.  Every morning there'd be a few more smashed shells scattered there. I wonder whether the decline in the song thrush population is linked to the increased use of slug pellets in our gardens?

One of our local squirrels was very nearly captured yesterday. I don't greatly mind squirrels visiting our feeders, but I do like to make sure they don't feel too comfortable doing so, as while they are there the birds don't get much of a look-in. So I often go out and blast them with a water gun, or chase them off with hand-clapping and mild swearwords (I wonder what the neighbours make of that?). On this occasion, though, the attack came from elsewhere. Having dropped quite a bit of seed when filling the feeders the previous evening, I'd left enough on the ground to attract this particular squirrel into rootling about on our lawn rather than climbing to the feeders as I might have expected. So it was happily making its way across the lawn when there came a sudden pounce and there it was, wrestling with a large black cat, a beast I've had to chase off my land a few times before now. The cat was twice the size of the squirrel, and though squirrels can give a pretty good account of themselves I didn't give much for this one's chances. So I intervened, sending cat off in one direction and squirrel in another. No harm done on this occasion, but no squirrels seen on my premises since then!