YOUNG blue tits and great tits are now fully grown though they can still be distinguished by their yellow cheeks. They are bolder than when they first came out of the nest, and are moving around the woods with their parents in search of food. These family parties will soon join up in larger flocks of mixed species, with coal tits and long-tailed tits joining in. It is unusual for the blue tits to have a second brood, but sometimes the other species can be found nesting again. The male titmice have mostly stopped singing by now, though the great tits will start again in the first days of autumn.
Greenfinches can still be heard wheezing in the treetops, and many of the females are sitting on a new clutch of eggs in a large, untidy nest in an evergreen hedge or bush. The males may still be feeding fledglings from the first brood, which squeal noisily in the depths of the foliage. Young swallows are out in the sky. They lack the long streamers on the sides of the tail that adorn their parents, but they seem to fly just as well. DJM