The Twitcher

The garden is buzzing this morning though not so much with bees as birds. At least 4 blue tits, 4 goldfinches, a great tit or two, dunnocks, robins, the woodpigeon feeding off the scraps that reign down on it's head from the seed feeder, blackbirds, the garden warbler persisting with the brambles though they're clearly tastless, the odd rogue magpie which looks like the Kargan from highlander due to it's lack of head plumage but most exctingly of all, the guy in the picture, a spotted woodpecker. Just appeared out the blue. Nature is truly extraordinary. How did it know there was food, there are no woodpeckers round here, it's not really woodpecker country. Once upon a time, on seeing this I would have texted this to my birder friend, Daniel Kirpatrick, as he was my only birder friend. Bird fanciers are a bit like acoholics in the sense that they're  don't necessarily want to people to know, it's a bit embarassing, but there's worse things to do than love the birds. Anyway, if the woodpecker comes back, great, as he 's a colourful addition to the garden, if he doesn't I might just consider it to be a passing visit from dat giant coircus strongman in the sky, Dan Koirkpatrick!