Sunday evening: The visitors have all gone – and so have the household authorities (temporarily). It’s quiet here, and it seems even quieter up at Shirlett. There’s a faint hum of distant traffic on the Bridgnorth to Wenlock road, but other than that, it’s just birdsong*. In the woods, the helleborines are looking good and will be flowering soon. Back in the open, I spot a deer – then it spots me and springs away, back into the woods. Looks like a roe – they’re more common a little further south, in Mortimer Forest, but usually we see fallow deer here (and the occasional muntjac)
* Merlin says it could hear a blackbird, a blackcap, a robin, a linnet and a treecreeper:

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