A trio of birds and some badgers.

It's getting really wild around here and I don't just mean the weather. Last night I saw the local badgers nosing round my car again. I had heard from a neighbour that they were back again, her pampas grass had disappeared overnight and was trailed across her garden and round past the shed to hole in the stream bank 10m away. I haven't seen them for about 18 months but obviously that set is still in use. I'll have to try and get up about 2am again tonight to watch them although I was going to get some sugar puffs to put out for them but I forgot. I'm hoping the sugar puffs might lure them slightly more into the light away from the garage wall so they can be seen more easily.

Another oddity is that after going nightingale watching several evenings recently, the last time with the grandkids in tow as well, we now have a resident one at the bottom of our road camped out in a huge fir tree. I have lived here for 23 years and the birds here generally have vastly increased in numbers but I have never heard a nightingale here at home until now. Middle daughter and I spotted him on Sunday through the binoculars although he has been around since last Thursday. All that fuss to drive a couple of miles to go and listen to one and I can lie in bed at 5am and hear one plain as anything.

We have a strange jackdaw too. These have been increasing year on year and last year we had one with a distinctly craoky off-key voice. He seems to have returned again, or maybe he was silent all winter, so now we get this strange almost honking noise from about 7am. I know it IS a jackdaw as I have watched him through the bins too.

The third 'new' bird are flycatchers who sit on the telephone wires at the back of the house and then do a lovely tumbling display catching their next meal. They appear to be nesting in the eaves of a house in that direction and though I have looked for the fledglings I haven't seen any yet.

Either this spring is distinctly odd or else this village has suddenly become a magnet for a great influx of wild life.