Blackberries, mystery bird and first cucumber

I made a detour on the way back from kayaking to pick blackberries. I take a left fork under the railway bridge where fewer people go, but it must be a little shaded there as not so many ripe ones as out beside the made-up path on the way there. But I got enough for a crumble - large juicy ones.

On my way there, cycling past the Leyton Marshes, I saw a small reddish brown bird with a ruffled crest. My first thought was "yellow hammer". I haven't seen those since a child in Cornwall when they would be high up on the telephone wires, so it was by their song I'd recognise them: "little bit of bread and noooo cheese". This might sound strange to those who have never heard it, but it is what they sing!

I've just looked in my Collins Bird Guide, and yellowhammers have yellow heads and underparts, and the reddish brown is just at the bottom of their backs. According to the book the male cirl bunting has a crest as well, but also quite a bit of yellow, and "in Britain now confined to handful of coastal sites in SW England", so unlikely to be in NE London! The rustic bunting has more brown, but books says it breeds in swampy spruce or pine forest with birch, willow or other deciduous trees or in dense, waterlogged deciduous forest. I'm still searching the Collins Bird Guide as I type this and have found the indigo bunting. That looks my best bet, but "rare vagrant in Europe including in British Isles". 

So "mystery bunting" it is then

Picked my first (indoor) cucumber.

something eating my cucumbers!

In the conservatory I have 3 small pots with cucumber seeds in, 4 of the 8 seeds have germinated, but they've been nibbled! I hope to remember to sneak out before I go to bed in the hope of catching the culprit!

Day off today, and did the winter bedding - two trips to the laundrette as well as my washing machine. This was a time when a car would have been useful, as I would then have only needed one trip to the laundrette. And I had only one bed to cope with - real problem with families to get this sort of job done!