Sunday, and the spring sunshine hit East Dulwich with a blast of warmth that has got everything moving again...
Sunday, and the spring sunshine hit East Dulwich with a blast of warmth that has got everything moving again. The blue sky was almost painful to the eyes, after so much grey recently. Our south-facing fence, covered with ivy, was alive with sunbathing beasts: shieldbugs, spiders, ladybirds, bees, and two cats nestled in at the bottom. The newts have returned to the pond too; four of them were swimming about in there. These are the regular denizens of my garden, but two unusual visitors were a pair of jays.
I do occasionally catch a glimpse of these handsome birds, although magpies and crows are the usual corvids in this part of London. I'm not sure what they were up to, but they spent several minutes strutting about on the small area of decking near the apple tree, before ambling noisily off through the branches and away. This was the second time this week they were here. Maybe they're nesting nearby.
I hear jays more often than I see them, and their angry scrawking call often echoes through Dulwich and Sydenham Hill Woods or Peckham Rye. Linnaeus must have been tittering his socks off when he coined the genus name Garrulus for them.
Finding one of the azure feathers from the bright wing flash is always a treat, and even now I cannot resist picking one up if I see it. They make the perfect adornment to my hat.
