Demented blackbird

Pam Ferris played a pipistrelle (the iPad's never heard that word before) in 'Rumblings in the Rafters' on Radio 4. ?

Btw, I don't suppose anyone's found a way of feeding the blackbirds without feeling the squirrels, pigeons, jays and magpies? (Is that racist?)

Two fledgling seagulls on a roof across the road are practicing flying. Looks like they are dancing. Mine isn't old enough yet.

Hooty, I have seen very few thrushes but there are masses of greenfinches in my garden. They make very short work of the sunflower hearts in my bird feeder. We also have flocks of jackdaws around here which make an awful racket early in the morning, so much so that I have taken to sleeping with the window shut. I can't put out fat balls any more because they and other bigger birds don't give the tits and finches a look-in. Luckily there's plenty of food around for the blackbirds at the moment.

I had a male blackbird in my garden the other day feeding two youngsters. They seemed to have all their flight feathers (one of them flew up onto the rotary clothes line) but their plumage wasn't adult. The male was trying to get one of them to take a small worm; it kept opening its beak but for some reason couldn't manage to take it down. Dad tried two or three times and then gave up and gave it to the other one who wolfed it! They both looked well fed. As for thrushes, we see them round here but rarely in the gardens.

The male blackbird that inhabits the rear of my garden has two legs, but one of them just hangs there and seems useless. It's been like that all summer and doesn't seem to bother him but, because I feel sorry for him he gets extra mealy worms.

gillyknits - that reminded me of the summer the year before. One evening,our young cat actually caught a bat. Goodness knows how she managed it,she was on the balcony,and came running in with it in her mouth. Thankfully it was still alive and appeared unharmed and my daughter managed to take it off her. It was such a sweet little thing. We put it back out on the balcony on the seat where it sat for a minute,then happily,it flew off.

Anya we had a female blackbird for a few years with a curled up claw that hopped around. She raised young, so it didn't hold her back.

When I was at my Mum's the other week we saw a white baby sparrow being fed by an adult. It was a creamy white with a few flecks of beige. I looked it up online and it's quite rare. It's survived so far, but there's so many cats around it will need some luck.

Wilma, was it anything like this one that I spotted on Lindisfarne?

Very similar, less brown though on the one I saw.

We have black birds every now and then with a white patch and it is caused by the same genetic mutation as the sparrows we've both seen numberplease. I wish we'd had a camera handy too, but we were just sitting on the garden bench for a few moments when the sparrows landed on the washing line. We both froze and a few seconds later they were gone. Magical.

The condition is called leucism and it's to do with a defect in cells that produce pigments. (Albinism is caused by the lack of melanin only). At least I think this is what I read.

At first I doubted that it was a sparrow, but it was with a few other sparrows, they came fairly close to where I was sitting, didn`t seem all that bothered.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201607/medium-256045-seahouses-and-northumberland-2012-018.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201607/medium-848521-seahouses-and-northumberland-2012-019.jpg

These were some of it`s companions

WOW! So yours wasn't a loner then. Different degrees of the problem in your group.