Thirsty Worms

Our lawns are sprinkled with daisies, some all white, others prettily pink-edged, and dandelions. Until a few years ago, I used to spend much time digging dandelions out of the lawn to leave it pristine and weed-free as Mike likes it. Now, however, we welcome daisies – they remind us of starlit skies, and we especially like dandelions as a small group of bullfinches spend much time on the lawn eating the seeds from dandelion clocks. They are such a neat bird, a pleasing shape and such well-defined edges to their various colours of their coats. The pretty red-faced goldfinch is also drawn to the garden for the dandelion seedheads and seeds from the lemon balm plant.

Yesterday I saw our first newly fledged robin, very fetchingly speckled. The family in the carrier bag of plants are not fledged yet, but with both parents feeding all day long, they should be very strong when they are ready to face the big world.
We watched a visiting cat stalk, catch and dispatch a short-tailed field vole a few days ago. These are charming creatures and a good addition to the garden as they bring the owls; the weasels and the foxes have also been spied hunting and catching them.

I am constantly fishing worms out of the pond. How do they get in there and why? I never see them “running” across the lawn at breakneck speed to go for a swim, and if it is just a drink they need they could get that from the birdbath.

Baby Birds

The baby birds are starting to show themselves. The first on the scene were the dunnocks: tiny dark dashes on their heads and bodies, running from front to back. Next were the young blackbirds, newly feathered covered and fluffed out. They are bigger in appearance than their sleek parents, although the adult female is still plucked bare on the back of her head and neck by the efforts of the male to further his genes. I was delighted to see the first young starling. These birds have been rare and infrequent visitors to our garden the last few years. The youngster is sometimes mistaken for a young blackbird due to his mid-brown colour; he has none of the white spots or colourful iridescence of his parents, however. His squawk alone sets him apart from the blackbirds. His bill is different and his gape is also wider and more persistent. I threw out some suet, dried fruit, seed and wet bread. When he was a nestling his mother often chose suet or dried fruit, today she packed her beak with enormous quantities of wet bread and stuffed it down his open beak. After two such helpings, he stood very erect and looked uncomfortable. He watched and waited as she packed her beak again. Although he was opening and closing his beak he was unable to make a sound, so she flew back to the nest to feed his siblings while stayed very upright awaiting her return – an easy prey for the kestrel or the sparrowhawk, but fortunately for him, not today.

Friendly Robin

The last few years, my precious garden has become very overgrown, but now I have a new lease of life due to a change of medication – I can breathe so much more easily.

Mike has kept the lawns cut, but the rest has grown rampantly. This was not as bad as it might have been, because we have made our garden into a wildlife sanctuary, however, now I have more strength and energy, I am once again able to enjoy working on it.

Weeding a section of garden yesterday, I was joined by a friendly robin collecting grubs, worms and insects for the nestlings. This same robin waits on the kitchen window sill at odd times throughout the day until I provide some food. The robin made us laugh yesterday because it was apparent that although he watches me through the window, he did not equate the person he sees inside with the person who was doing the weeding, because while I was outside he kept flying to the window and looking intently inside.

There are many robins in the garden, but the reason this one is special is because he has built his nest and is rearing his young in a carrier bag with three plants in it outside the conservatory door. Our constant coming and going near the bag has made no difference to him – we might just as well be invisible as we stand in the open doorway and he flies in and out of the bag. I was worried for his family a week or so back when the heavy rain started, but need not have feared, because he had pulled one side of the bag down and inward to protect his nest.

The feud I observed last month between the mistle thrush and a magpie was won by the magpie, and the mistle thrushes are now building a new nest in the nearby conifers.