What a cheek! Not content with the milk bottle trick our local bluetits are helping themselves to bits of the fibrous liners in our hanging baskets to make their nests.

For two or three weeks now I've been watching a couple of magpies building a nest in a large tree near the path that runs between Northernhay Park and Central Station (in Exeter). Keep trying to see if they have chicks yet but both are still off the nest at the same time, hopping about together and squawking to each other, so I suspect they still haven't laid eggs. Soon there will be too many leaves on the trees to see them clearly. There's been a recent complication in the shape of a couple of carrion crows - also collecting nesting material - who seem to be encroaching on the magpies' territory. One magpie hops around a nearby pine tree presumably distracting the crows from the magpie nest site and there are chases through the trees both crows chasing magpies and vice versa.

That path is a good area for birds it's also the usual haunt of three or four wood pigeons, a few longtailed tits, blue tits, great tits and a coal tit, plus a wren, a robin (the remaining robin from three or four earlier in the year - presumbably the winner in the territorial fight), blackbirds, a songthrush and on one occasion a goldcrest. At least three grey squirrels as well.

Spent Saturday dodging the rain and doing more planting. Strawberries into the strawberry planter that we'd been using for herbs up to now (now we have a garden we have a herb patch). A row of peas to grew up the trellis on the side of the shed, two rows of beetroot. Garlic in between the broad beans (thought the broad beans would have cropped by now - need the space!). Earlier on I put in a horseradish root and two rhubarb crowns - leaving space for a courgette plant currently growing on in the conservatory. Also growing on ready for planting out later are french beans, tumbling tomatoes for the hanging baskets and a chilli plant - going to get some that will go outside too. Oh and there's spuds in the potato planter round the back - and a large basil plant on the kitchen windowsill. Lots of little gnats appearing in the garden now the weather's warmer so hopefully we will get house martins and swallows later. We get lots of sparrows - the houses here have these square section plastic edgings on the roof tile edges and the sparrows nest up them.