18°C, high cloud; Ç=42miles

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Puzzling behaviour, when disturbed flocks of finches fly along in front of a scarey cyclist- in the same direction. We travelled at least 200 yds with about a dozen little birds just in front and to my sides. Odd- why not just fly across and behind?  On further thought, parhaps they have a good reason to do it this way. They presumably have to keep to field boundaries, their best protection would be in hedgrows and avoid the open middle of fields where they’d been seen easily by a high-up predator. I saw a few hawks today (namely a Kestrel and another I couldn’t identify). Anyway, that means that I, being that cyclist would be travelling along parallel to the hedges would follow along their favoured routes of safe escape. So there we were, terrified birds and charmed me.

Maybe they weren’t scared off, maybe they were just embarassed about getting caught bathing in a puddle.