I have blackbirds nesting in my garden and my day is pretty much taken up with standing at the kitchen window on magpie duty !! I feel very excited about the new arivals. The female laid her first egg on 13th April so hopefully the eggs should be hatching at anytime now but I have to say I have been late for work on numerous occasions because I can't leave the house until I have seen the female go back into the nest and and if I see a Magpie I am like something possessed -shooing it off. This has taken over my life like you wouldn't believe. Maybe this has something to do with the maternal streak !!!
Nesting blackbirds are responsible for my gardening obsession. I live in a dreary northern market town and I didn't have a garden, I had a cement hole. A couple of years ago I noticed that blackbirds had nested in the hydrangea that scrambles up the back wall of the house. Whilst I got interested in their comings and goings, eternally armed with a super-soaker kept by the kitchen door to spray cats, putting food out nearby and trying to give the fledglings a fighting chance, I started to treat the yard like another room. I'd tidy it and move things around but I always felt that whatever I did to my yard it'd never really feel like a garden.
I was wrong. It's still a cement hole, but there are forty odd containers out there now, and climbers running up very available bit of wall space.
And so far this season, we're on our third lot of fledged blackbird chicks.
People spend thousands of pounds on therapy and possessions that they think will give them joy. I get the same joy by watching the birds and tending to my tiny plot. For me there is no greater joy.
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Whilst I got interested in their comings and goings, eternally armed with a super-soaker kept by the kitchen door to spray cats, putting food out nearby and trying to give the fledglings a fighting chance, I started to treat the yard like another room. I'd tidy it and move things around but I always felt that whatever I did to my yard it'd never really feel like a garden.
I was wrong. It's still a cement hole, but there are forty odd containers out there now, and climbers running up very available bit of wall space.
And so far this season, we're on our third lot of fledged blackbird chicks.
People spend thousands of pounds on therapy and possessions that they think will give them joy.
I get the same joy by watching the birds and tending to my tiny plot. For me there is no greater joy.