There is an English aphorism that silence is golden. In certain situations that is very true! But there are occasions when that is not true. This morning as we opened the nets the garden was silent - a single alarming blackbird was the sole avian contribution. Such silence is not a good sign, it tends to indicate that there has been little, or no passage during the night.  And so it was!  Evidence is in the table; really low titles.  This week*s totals have been consistently low and everyone has their fingers crossed that the autumn migration will soon start to pick up.

In the seemingly long pauses between net rounds there was some noteworthy activity.  In particular a family of ravens provided much "amusement."  For about forty minutes they were flying within the vicinity of the garden and making an amazing range of calls.  The calls seemed be an admixture of chuckles, cries and other bemusing calls.  Undoubtedly they were communicating with each other.  This communication has been studied by various biologist and their results (really observations) suggest that the ravens are communicating with each other about food, predators, where to fly and some biologist suspect they are just expressing various emotions, including pleasure.

We were amused and very thankful for their breaking the garden's silence this morning.

This evening there is a moth identification event occuring in the garden - it will be most interesting to see how many species will be observed. 

Folk på stationen: Chris Sharp, Joakim Matthiesen