Young things

We first saw a great spotted woodpecker in the garden in 2004 and thought, what a rare and surprising thing. Last year a juvenile visited the fat feeder quite often and this year we have seen both an adult and a juvenile. Last week, briefly, the juvenile was on the fence and the adult was feeding it from trips to the fat feeder. So it isn't rare, but it still seems surprising - I thought you had to go into the country to see woodpeckers.

Of course it is the time of year for juveniles - the garden is full of young great tits and young blackbirds (a young blackbird being fed is of course what the photo shows). And we also identified a pair of young squirrels, a little smaller than adults and behaving in that exploratory playful way that seems to mark the young of at least all mammalian species.