Bird Tales

And yet over Ludlow there were no swifts.  We have had one or two pairs in the village - over the village - this summer, but here too they seem to have gone.  The swallows I saw on the telegraph wires a week or so ago were perhaps not playing but preparing to leave in earnest.  Only the house martins are still here, a small tumble of them high up in the evening blue sky tonight.  

I have been adopted, or rather I have been putting crumbs out through the revamped kitchen window and  have three regulars, a scruffy robin, a scruffy blackbird and a scruffy thrush.  I assume they are this season's fledglings and still finding their feet when it comes to fending for themselves. Something as small as this can become a summer pleasure.