Tag Archives: blackbird

Winter Safari

I love my cycle commute to school.  It provides a light workout as well as giving me time to de-tox from the rigours of taming teenagers.  And I have more time to observe the world around me.

As I cycled through Lower Hadspen last week, I saw two large birds rising from the road in front of me.  I immediately recognised one as a buzzard and was pleased to see the other was a red kite.  These angular birds of prey are still relatively new to Somerset, having spread their territory down from Wales and the Midlands. I remember the first time I saw one in the county; it was circling over a schools’ athletics meeting at Yeovil and I hoped the presence of this carrion-eating raptor did not reflect poorly on the prognosis for the exhausted teenagers competing on the track.

This kite rose with ease from what I discovered was a dead hare. I was sad to see a hare as roadkill, but I supposed its presence, albeit dead, was more evidence to show that hares seem to be on the increase in our area.  We saw hares nearer our home last summer. An adult hare deliberately ran at our labrador, before veering off to lead her away from what I assumed were her young in another part of the field.  Needless to say, Ella took the bait but returned – exhausted – soon after without any prey.

Beyond the dead hare, I cycled slowly past cider orchards, alive with hundreds of chuffling fieldfares and looping redwings and later at home, as I walked with the dogs, I listened to robins singing and blackbirds calling in the gathering gloom. We traversed fields as flocks of starlings skimmed across the treetops on their way to reedbed roosts on the Levels.

The sun was setting, its heat dissipating across the horizon in the frosty air and I caught a glimpse of something else red russet in the distance.  A large fox was trotting distractedly away from me across the field.  He looked unconcerned but stopped to look at me as I did likewise.  Lithe and healthy, he seemed to hinge at the hips as he gazed at me before moving along.  Some song lines came to mind:

“I was lookin’ back to see if you were lookin’ back at me
To see me lookin’ back at you”. 

The title – “Safe from Harm” – seemed apt as neither dog had the remotest clue of the fox nearby.  He was in no danger and the air of calm deepened still as my gaze followed him and I noticed two roe deer, also looking back at me.  They moved lightly across the field below us.  I laughed ironically and asked them if they were all paid up members of my cycling and walking safari. 

I put my two natural born killers on their leads and wandered up the lane for a cup of tea.

The Birds and the Bees

Busy Bee on Allium

“Spring is Sprung
The grass is Riz
I wonder where dem boidies iz…”

Well Spring is definitely Sprung; the grass is needing a weekly mow  and I am delighted to say I know where a lot of dem boidies is, as we have seen plenty in the garden or on our morning walks with The Lab.

As we continue to expand our knowledge of birdsong we now recognise the Blackcap which has apparently been described as the Northern Nightingale.  Hopefully that does not mean that it sings in a strange accent, has suffered high levels of unemployment and has recently deserted its normal electoral preferences by voting for the Brexit Party.  But it does have a song that is indeed mellifluous although I feel it has a bit of a Scandinavian hurdy gurdy lilt to it.  More of an IKEA nightingale, I reckon.

But nothing wrong with that.

Identifying birds will always remind me of The Old Man who was a self-styled (and self-educated) expert on the subject. I will never match his knowledge and I felt his absence the other day when I saw a Wheatear, which I have not seen for years.  My first instinct is still to think of telling TOM about what – for me – is a rare sighting.  I would have loved to have shared the news with him.  We also saw a yellowhammer (bonus points to Mrs B for his one) which is another bird we do not see often and this evokes memories of childhood as I recall my mother teaching me its call of “a little bit of bread and no cheese”, although perhaps these days the Yellowhammer is more likely to be singing “a little non-smart phone and no 4G”.

Elsewhere we have had some significant, albeit brief, visits to the garden – first from a Greater Spotted woodpecker which gorged itself on the peanuts, and then a Sparrowhawk that picked off a small songbird and made off with its prey amid a chorus of angry tweets.  A Jay was another unwelcome visitor that left after a full-on assault from an angry blackbird.

A none-native passer-by appeared the other day when I was drawn outside by what sounded like a rusty wheel being scraped over corrugated iron.  One of the Guinea Fowl from The Manor down the road was sitting on the fence making a racket.  Fortunately, not being a Corbynite Fowl, it came down off the fence.  For the pollsters amongst you, it decided to Leave: much to the disdain of our Labrador.

There have been rumblings about how few swallows there are this year and at the Old Place they are still noticeable by their absence.  I did see one on the wire down the road and have seen house martins around, but swallows are in short supply which is a little worrying.  One migrant we did hear the other morning was a cuckoo, which I have not heard in these parts for some years.  Mrs B and I had a slight disagreement as I tend to talk about cuckoos with the definitive article:  I always hear THE cuckoo, not A cuckoo.  It is the only bird that I can think of which is spoken of in such terms.

Mrs B was not convinced – and she is normally the more definitive one.

Apart from the birds, the bees have also been busy around here.  None have taken advantage of my Bee Brick yet though some might have to as we came across the remains of a bumble bees nest strewn across the road from what I assume was a badger assault.  As we always say: “You can’t stop a badger”.

I was less keen to allow a bigger interloper to make its home in the garden when I found a seriously large hornet humming around the shed.  I jarred up the Big Mother for identification purposes as Mrs B told me we needed to check if it was one of those nasty Asian Hornets which are potentially a danger to our own native bees.  We I-D’ed it as a European Hornet – so I guess it will be gone by 31st October, along with the free movement of labour and last shred of respect for Britain as a land of fairness and good sense.

 

European Hornet. Over here, taking our jobs

 

 

Rewild at Heart

Catkins

Simon Barnes was speaking on Radio 6 the other Sunday morning, promoting about his book “Rewild Yourself: 23 spellbinding ways to make nature more visible”. He has ideas to get everyone to be more in touch with the natural world around us.  One suggestion – to learn the songs of some common birds which – is exactly what Mrs B and I have been doing recently too.  We reckon we have learnt the great tit, song thrush, robin, blackbird and chaffinch so morning strolls are now very much a multi-sensory affair as we listen out for birdsong.

And bird song is not the only sound that attracts the attention at the moment as the countryside reverberates to the drumming of greater spotted woodpeckers on hollow branches, and the overhead thrum of closely packed wings as a flock of starlings arrives at a nearby tree.  Whenever I see starlings I recall one sixth former from a private girls school asking the question “starling….is that anything to do with that bloke in Russia?” The subsequent incredulity of staff and students said it all: thirteen years of school fees for this? Some serious rewilding needed there.

Mrs B and I were very much at one with our natural environment on the morning dog walk this week.  We listened to the song thrush which regularly sings at the top of the same tree each morning;  we watched flocking starlings and spectated as two deer fled the attentions of our hopelessly out-paced labrador.  Potentially a pet dog might have a negative impact on the local ecology, but those deer will be fitter and healthier for the hundred workout sprint they put in before the dog threw in the towel.  Ella proceeded to flush out a couple of pheasants and then a rabbit but she was no nearer catching them than she was the deer.  She might have had a chance with a grey squirrel – but she did not spot that – and fortunately failed to see the badger bumbling which was oblivious to our presence just fifteen yards away.   We put the dog on the lead:  this was one piece of wildlife she would probably do well to avoid.

Back home the (flocking) starlings were trying to get back into their nest sites under the tiles of the house.  I’ve put wire over some of the holes to stop this so now, as I sit at my desk, all I can hear is them scratching away at the bars trying to get in – like an avian Andy Dufresne in reverse.  I would not mind them being there, but we decided to evict them when they started removing loft insulation and depositing large tufts around the garden.

So no more artificial domesticity for them – I am encouraging them to do their own bit of rewilding.

Stile and oak tree

Sun rise over South Somerset

The Birds, The Birds

Male-Blackbird-Singing
Blackbird on a wire.  Well, fruit tree actually.

One of my former flatmates had a phobia about birds flapping anywhere near her.  I thought of her recently when we found a jackdaw in the shed when we were clearing out the Old Man’s place the other day.  One of my brothers screamed like a girl when he opened the door and onlookers would have been amused to watch four men in their mid-to-late 50s (I’ll be kind to my eldest sibling) flapping more than the startled bird as it – and they – tried to get out of the door.

Trapped birds seem to be a theme this week, as I found a black bird in the new greenhouse hiding under the basil and tomatoes.  I ushered the relieved bird to the exit and got on with weeding, picking out side shoots and cutting salad.

But then things got more sinister as, in a scene lifted from Hitchcock, I visited the greenhouse a few days later to check on my (now ripening) tomatoes.  The Sweet Millions are my little darlings – they are being produced in burgeoning numbers.  Under my careful direction they are my leading actors in the annual greenhouse summer blockbuster.  But the dismay and horror (the horror!) I felt when I stepped into the greenhouse, like Tippi Hedren into the old farmer’s house, to find a scene of devastation and lying in a corner, behind the basil, the red eviscerated remains of my cherry tomatoes.

Cut to the next scene as, with the symphonic score rising in a crescendo, I ran breathlessly from the scene, unable to scream or even explain what I had witnessed as I got into my old ford truck and drove away.

Ok, so perhaps I over-dramatise.  There were no dead bodies in the greenhouse – it was only a couple of tomatoes that had been eaten.  I was not so upset that I screamed but I did utter an expletive, which Tippi would not have been allowed to do on-screen.  Nor did I  jump into my Ford truck:  the only car in the vicinity was Mrs B’s Honda Civic.  And I probably did discuss the situation with the only sentient being in the vicinity – Ella the Labrador – as I tried to work out what had been eating my tomatoes.

She did not have much to contribute to the discussion.

In retrospect it is obvious, but in the absence of smashed glass, or birds impaled on the windows, it was not entirely clear who was harvesting the tomatoes twenty-four hours prior to me picking them.  It did finally dawn on me later when I saw another blackbird in the greenhouse.  This bird clearly knew exactly how to get in and out, and it’s motivation was obvious as the remains for more nearly ripe toms were left on the soil.

Birds have been a problem this year.  In addition to the usual attacks from pigeons, sparrows have destroyed my pea crop and the blackbirds had also had a good go at the blueberries and raspberries.  So now, in addition to the soft fruit being covered in netting, the greenhouse has netting draped over the roof and door to deter any airborne invasion.

The tomatoes are ripening nicely but I remain wary of flocks of birds gathering on the wires, in the trees, peas or anywhere near the greenhouse.

 

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The evidence