It was a nice sunny day today. A kestrel sat on top of one of the conifers for while and then flew right at me and landed on the roof of the house. Not sure why.

This songthrush was basking in the sun, looking rather gormless.

There were a lot of black redstarts hunting around the house today.

I'm hoping the haws are going to last long enough to bring in some redwings this year. It doesn't look likely with this hooverbelly around.

There's a small area behind the house that wasn't trashed by the cows. There's a fine angelica plant still flowering there.

We haven't seen a hawfinch for a while so this dirty-beaked individual was a welcome sight. A few minutes later a buzzard alighted in the adjacent tree which gave a scale comparison. 

There's been a very long quiet spell in the garden. The cows arrived at the beginning of the month which meant we had almost no migrant birds this year. The weather had been reasonably decent too and this has meant that there have been a lot more people in the valley. Whatever the reason, there really hasn't been much to see.

Today I saw a female blackcap and a chiffchaff but everything else was bog standard.

Despite what I said on Friday, today we've seen some interesting birds. No whitethroats or whinchats, but today we saw a common redstart (photo is really out of focus, I know), a couple of tree pipits and three juvenile siskins.

Additionally, we saw a couple of wall brown butterflies.

The mullein in our garden stopped flowering a couple of weeks ago, but today it had a final hurrah and managed to push out another couple of flowers right at the very top of its six-foot heft.