A miserably mild couple of days with a daily deluge of driving drizzle. The several hundred Lapwings now occupying the motorway fields near Bishopton look thoroughly soaked.
Read an interesting article which sheds some light on the goings-on in the garden. I have often wondered why there are long spells with no birds on the feeders, even though they are well stocked. The article suggested that Blue and Great Tits continue to display a flock feeding behaviour even in gardens, and that the reason they only appear for short spells is because the whole flock is constantly on the move between different feeding sites. Apparently this is a way for the flock to keep "as many balls in the air as possible" so that if one site fails there are others to fall back on.
Another question I often ask myself is why there are so few birds around (e.g. max 4 Blue Tits and 2 Great Tits). The same article reported studies (involving ringing) which showed that there are actually something like ten times more birds of each species visiting our gardens than we see at any one time.