One of the advantages of living here is that even though I'm not able to run around at the moment I can sit in the garden and still see and hear plenty of things, butterflies birds and lots of other bugs and insects, with only the distant sound of traffic.

While I was wondering just how itchy the healing skin round the clips on the new bit of engineering on my knee could get, I watched this Starling having a good scratch, and felt very envious.

Nearby, on the side of the garage, I've fixed a pair of semi-detached nest boxes (meant for House Sparrows). These featured almost a year ago on 22nd May 2007, and once again the right hand one has been used by a pair of Great Tits. Most of the time the view that I got was the back end of one of the parents diving in.

On the way out, often, the adult would bring out a little package excreted by one of the youngsters. This is a very convenient way of keeping the nest clean and tidy, quite unlike many of the nests of sea-birds that stink atrociously.

This looks like a nice big juicy spider on the way into the nestlings. The birds were away from the nest for a few minutes at a time, always returning with some protein filled morsel, and judging by the amount noise coming out they are doing well.

This was almost a head on condition as another spider is on it was in and another faecal on the way out. The incoming bird sat and looked bemused for a few seconds before going in.

A small caterpillar is on the way in this time, the tit species time their breeding to coincide with the emergence of the caterpillars of many of the moth species that use the trees as their food plants.