Whitethroat and late Spring update

Or perhaps it should be summer.  But sitting here on a cold evening and looking out at the rain, it certainly doesn't feel like summer, and the plants don't quite know what to do either.  First we had a lovely early warm spell in March, then a really rainy period, then a hot week or was it even 10 days? not quite I don't think - but long enough for our free draining garden to get very dry, and then just when all the watering had started again, it started to rain and the temperature dropped massively.

Even so, the garden has looked lovely - but it would be good if it were warm enough to hang around in it.  We've had a new visitor though, or perhaps I've just noticed it. My friend Jenny has been over, and we noticed a bird singing that we tried to identify (or rather she did) and I wasn't sure what it was, but on looking it up, thought it might be a whitethroat.  All the features fitted, and the behaviour - perched on top of a tree.  But it is supposed to be a bird that visits woodland heath and scrub, according to a British Garden Birds (but then I suppose there is a clue in the title that it might also visit gardens).  In any case I have not seen it before this year.  And to double check identity I checked the song and recorded its calls, too.

I only wish I had a good enough camera to take photographs of it, (or there might be a pair, I'm not sure yet) but I haven't.

And now we are in June and I have not seen or heard a cuckoo at all this year, though Jim did, a few weeks ago on the common.  Whilst Jenny was here we went to the Hanson nature reserve, which was very peaceful.  The highlight was seeing the Great Crested Grebes' courtship dance - another first for me, and lovely to watch (though a bit late maybe??)

There were many bees around too, on the massive amount of comfrey that grows there and is flowering at the moment - very tall this year with the rain, and much of it has flopped over.  I could see that there were different kinds of bees - but don't know which they are.  I will get out my bee identification chart, but apparently they are not easy to identify.  The photos show one of the little lakes with the flags out in the reserve and a bee on the comfrey

Another first from a few weeks ago was seeing jays flying over the garden to the shrubs and trees beyond.  I have not noticed jays nearby before although I do see them around Milton Keynes.  It just reminded me what pretty birds they are.