Sparrows the bosses of the drinking bowl!

I have a casserole dish which I fill with water and put in the garden in the summer for the foxes and the cats. This year I've seen birds using it too.

This morning I looked out of the bedroom window to see a sparrow drinking while a female blackbird waited her turn (though there would have been room for both to drink). When the blackbird was drinking another sparrow flew down for a drink and the blackbird gave up her turn for him.

Eventually she got a proper turn and after a drink she also had a bath.

On my cycle ride home yesterday after blackberrying I saw a lesser spotted woodpecker in the cleared shrubby area that they've put a path through alongside Orient Way (the Ruckholt Relief Road that was).

A fellow kayaker has had all the corn off his corn on the cobs on his allotment eaten - he thinks parakeets.

sweet potatoes a disappointment

This year I experimented with sweet potatoes.

I got them as slips (they are not tubers like ordinary potatoes), and they were potted up into small pots for 3 weeks and then out by mid June (which was this year when it was just about safe to do so). I had 4 in pots and 3 in the ground.

I dug them up a few days ago, and was very disappointed by the number and, in particular, the size of the sweet potatoes:

There is nothing to show scale in this picture - but they are small, maximum 3 inches (7cm) long and mainly skinny.

I had some with lunch today and also had beans, swiss chard and a bay leaf from the garden.

Very wet this morning, so didn't have a bike ride but did have a walk round the block this afternoon to get my back moving. As I came home there were two parakeets flying overhead. Nearest I've seen them before was on the Lea Navigation near the old Middlesex Filter Beds.