Today, perhaps due to the bad weather, saw the return of a much loved, but  infrequent visitor to the garden, the mistle thrush. Once again it was the pull of the windfall apples that did it.

I’d picked all the decent apples some weeks ago, and stored them in a box in the garage. When I went in there today I found that someone, presumably a little mouse who couldn’t believe his luck, had been eating them.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind sharing my apples with anyone, but he had taken a bite (or several) out of just about every apple. Why can’t he finish one before he moves on to the next?

As a result I now have lots of ‘windfall’ apples to give to the birds, much to the delight of the blackbirds and of course the mistle thrush.

Just like last time there was an altercation and just like last time the mistle thrush won. He really is a handsome bird.

I’ve been wondering for a few days now where the long-tailed tits were in all this bad weather as I hadn’t seen them for what seems like weeks. Good as gold they turned up today, I only saw 3 but I expect the others were around too.

A brief sighting of a gold finch and green finch means I’ve had a pretty good week for bird spotting.