Devastating High Winds

The high winds of a few nights ago, not only caused sleeplessness with their loud roaring noise, but also damage to trees and plants. Our ancient five feet high magnolia stellata, with its pure white star like flowers lost its top. In the lane two more trees succumbed and were left uprooted and tossed across the lane, in falling they took with them our telephone line.

As frustrating as we found this, it must have been far worse for the pair of long-tailed tits, whose nest was wrested from the safety of its hedge and thrust to the ground by the strong wind. I had watched them for several days collecting materials for their nest. These ranged from wind blown feathers, moss gathered from the lawn, lichen from the old apple tree to tiny sticky cobwebs, which they collected from round the inner window frames while hovering. These were used to bind their beautiful little round nests together.

Looking from the lounge window I saw the pair of long-tailed tits flying to and fro in an agitated manner, when we went into the lane to check the telephone line, we found the two trees down blocking the lane and to my sadness we also found the freshly built long-tailed tits nest on the ground, next to the hedge.