Respecting the neighbours

Mrs T eventually got to trimming the ivy hedge that grows over our garden wall and helps keeps intruders out. It will never be a masterpiece of topiary, but it is held in check with annual or biannual trimmings.

The main reason for delaying the trim is shown below: the birds nest in it. This blackbird’s nest does not have its lining of mud. Was it abandoned unfinished for some reason, or was it impossible to find the right sort of mud in this driest of summers? For sure the blackbirds raised two broods in the hedge this year.

Here is a fledgling from a few years ago, quite convinced he is invisible.

We recommend respecting the neighbours, they will repay you with interest — plenty of interest as you watch them go about their business.

Let the hedge grow till August, when the last chicks are fledged. Make sure they can get to water for drinking and bathing; ours like the tiny pond opposite the hedge. It gets plenty of shade and is full of oxygenating plants, mostly self-invited. We wish we had more frogs, but our last cock blackbird had been watching the kingfishers, I think, because he had learnt to catch tadpoles to feed his offspring. This year it seemed as though more survived to grow legs and make for dry land. Let’s hope so.

A Kerfuffle in Canterbury.

We were about to sit down to lunch in the garden, with all the furniture arranged for social distancing, when there was a mighty clamour from the roof of next-door-but-one. That roof has a hole, approximately 20cm square, where a tile has fallen. this has been a godsend to the sparrows who seem to be on the increase; they’ve moved back into a hole under our eaves which was abandoned for a few years. Two sparrows in particular are tame enough to come near to our table and suggest that we might spare a crumb. How could we say no?

It turned out that the racket on the roof was from the combined forces of sparrows and starlings, combining to chase away a pair of magpies who were taking too close an interest in the hole in the roof. The magpies left the scene, apparently empty-beaked, and life seemed to return to normal for the little birds.

Except that there was a little chick, still flightless, struggling at the edge of the garden pond. With wet feathers it was becoming more difficult, till Mrs T stretched out her arm and pulled the sorry sodden sparrowlet to safety. The little fellow seemed to know that safety lay in camouflage, hiding in the herbaceous border, but loud ‘feed me’ chirps told us he was still around.

I think he may have been involved in the magpie incident, perhaps pulled out of the nest but dropped to the ground as the bigger birds fled. Let’s hope his devoted parents’ efforts to feed him in hiding were enough to bring him to the joys of flight!

Less unexpected birds in the city.

The garden spectacle this week has been the two fledgling sparrows that have left the nest in next-door-but-one’s roof to flit and flutter to our back gate where they can perch, and cheep and flutter their stubby wings in the hope that their parents – or any passing sparrow for that matter – will feed them. There must be hope they will live, now they have spent two days out of the nest!

Here is one of them watching intently as his mother (or is it his aunt?) pecks at the fat balls over the gate. The fact that he was fed did not prevent him starting to call again as soon as he’d finished swallowing.

Although the adults are very tolerant of humans moving about the garden we share with  them, Chico took off as soon as the back door opened. Three metres’ flight to the washing line, where he could not get a grip, turned base over apex before achieving enough co-ordination to crash into the holly bush.

The two chicks were soon back on the gate, ‘Please Sir (or Madam) I want some more!