I came down this morning to a living room floor busy with feathers. This year has been quiet on bird casualties and I thought that Tom – our oldest and most bird-hostile cat – had finally passed his hunting days. Not so.

The bird was still alive though, and emerged to take flight when I fired the hoover on to clean up, bringing Tom out to have another go at finishing the job off. I quickly opened the back door and, fishing net in hand, I jumped up on the chair and got hold of the bird on the main light shade. A quick journey through the house before it realised what was going on, I got the bird through the door and released it to fly away. Unfortunately, an underpowered first flight only got it to the wall and it landed about 5 feet away from where Tom had taken up position to watch the affair. He inched forward and had to be manhandled away before he could take another swing. The bird took the opportunity to flap again and found its strength, disappearing up to the roof of the house to rest and recuperate out of harms way.

A fairly distressing start to the day for all concerned, but an interesting one as well. The bird was a juvenile blackbird, clearly not from the spring/summer brood – is this the fruit of a very early start to next years breeding, or an incredibly late finish to this year?