Tweet, tweet

Great excitement this evening as, for once in a while, a thrush-like bird came to sit on the lawn, just outside the extension window at the back of the house. A thrush-like bird which just sat there as we peered at it, yanking the occasional bug out of the lawn.

It defied identification in both of the two, admittedly small, bird books that we could lay our hands on. It sat there while I nipped off for the bins, which did not, however, prove any help. It looked decidedly dopey - sitting duck, as it were, for any visiting cat. But eventually it made off, uneaten.

Some time later I decided, using the irritatingly poor quality bird identifier on the RSPB website, that it was a juvenile mistle thrush. White spotted, slightly fluffy front, grey-green topsides. Longish tail. Middle sized, neither too long nor too short, straight black beak. Black eyes.

I have seen thrush-like birds down the Longmead Road. But none that sat still long enough to be peered at, so this is the first one which can be ticked off as a year tweet.

PS: perhaps I should start a thread on Streetlife. The inhabitants of Epsom Streetlife got very worked up about the bad & worse manners of people on bicycles, so perhaps I can get them worked up about the RSPB bird identifier and about how some of all those socking great bequests from old ladies ought to go towards sorting it out.