Found a Dunnock's nest today with four young with their flight feathers about half grown.
It was an easy one to find, on the evidence of both adults leaving the shrub one quite soon after the other. It is a Skimmia bush, very unprickly and near a path. I'd be surprised if they survive the crows and magpies.
Also in the same area, in the garden of a part-built house, a foxes earth dug into the side of a pile of soil which is high with weeds. I had seen a fox slinking away from there last week in the middle of the day. There are cubs about now. A very small one was killed on Wakefield Road at Copley.
In my garden, a juvenile blackcap panicked in my wide-open greenhouse and couldn't find the way out. I caught it with a large net and showed it the door.
Care must be taken about loose-hanging netting in the garden. I had to cut a chunk of netting out with a blue tit tangled in it. It was so badly tangled I had to take it inside and sit at the table and slowly cut it out. This was so it didn't escape from me with net still round its legs.
On the subject of plants, I have been informed that the Yellow Bird's Nest is appearing again near Todmorden Railway Station, the second year it is known to have been there. There is some at Cromwell Bottom LNR as well, and a new orchid species has been shown to me there. We are fairly sure it is Broad-leaved Helleborine, Epipactis helleborine.
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