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Full House (almost)

The bullfinches haven't returned but we are regularly seeing goldfinches on all four ports of the seed feeder. I am having to top up the sunflower seeds every few days now. We are also seeing chaffinches and all the usual tits, blue, great, long tailed and coal. There was also a starling on the fat ball holder today but these aren't going down at anything like the speed of the seeds. I won't fill the other fat feeders for a little while yet.

At ground level we have the usual selection, dunnock, robin, blackbird and wood pigeon but the pigeons don't seem to be frequent visitors as the ground feeder isn't being cleared yet. It took several days for a spillage of sunflower seeds to be cleared, I don't know if it was birds, field mice or badgers that were responsible.

I was out and about in east London last weekend. Parakeets were very obvious in Hackney, I heard them from inside the car in Victoria Park Road (yes they are that loud) and saw them over Broadway Market. I haven't seen any east of the Lea yet but in Walthamstow we had the very exotic (for me) sight of a flock of house sparrows.

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