I was making a cup of tea watching the sparrows as they darted from plant to plant, removing the spiders, the caterpillars and the green fly. They had their first batch of fledglings up in the tree at the bottom of the garden and darted from plant to tree, collecting then feeding.
Blue tits and great tits buzzed around too, looking for morsels suitable for their family and darting back into the hedge, came out only seconds later with an empty beak.
I picked up my binoculars and retreated to the living room.
More flowers here, so too the insect life.
A field mouse who has, I suspect, created a nest somewhere under next door's decking, bounded along the wall only to vanish somewhere in the shrubbery.
Do they eat snails? I'd been finding many an empty shell round there.
The blackbird with, I'm certain, a megaphone attached to his voice, boomed out to the world from one of the local roof tops whilst the resident robin hopped about displaying the red breast and chasing off those who would challenge him.
I haven't fed the birds. I've not created an artificial feeding station where a smorgasbord of grain is laid out for them, instead I've created an ecology where the insects are drawn back because the plants are drawn back because the soil has been brought back to a natural status.
I have four compost heaps, well two 'hot' bins and two slow compost heaps which do get hot but not so much as the bins do.
The bins take the seed heads I dont want spreading too much because they are such thugs and would take over. It gets Amazon (thank you) cardboard, dead plants and roots as well as chipped sticks etc.
The heaps take the rest, the plants which have run their course, the vegetation from the kitchen and dead leaves in autumn.
Anything that comes from the land goes back to the land.
I picked up my binoculars. Some of the fledglings are beginning their flights, fluttering from the tree to the hedge.
An adult sparrow flies towards the window, darts upward and removes another spider from under the eaves. That'll make a nice mouthful for one of those fluffballs, that's for certain.