Birds don’t live for ever

Since 2018 we have kept doves, but it took until the 2020 lockdowns for them to become part of the rhythm of our days with Nigel feeding them by hand and talking to them as they snaffled their dried peas and corn.

Being completely white, doves are difficult to distinguish from one another.  However, this anonymity has surely saved us some heartbreak. Doves are vulnerable to predators - their pale plumage makes them an easy target for our local sparrowhawks and peregrines and cats. Yet when we see feathers scattered on the ground (carnivore confetti) it is often hard to tell exactly which dove had been taken. 

One bird, however, has been our particular favourite - an excellent mother she has raised many chicks in our dovecote.  Over the years she has had two long-term partners with whom she has billed and cooed.  We could tell her from the others by a black feather below her eye, giving her the name Tear.  Every so often, Tear would vanish for a few days to incubate eggs, but now, for several weeks, she has not reappeared.

Similarly, it was during the Covid lockdowns that Nigel encouraged our garden robin to feed from his hand, and soon mine too.  The robin was always particularly friendly when feeding chicks.  He would look about him cautiously then swoop towards me.  Fluttering in midair, onto my fingers he would place his feet, looking as if they had been drawn with a sharp pencil. Swiftly he would tilt to peck a strand of suet from my palm, then make off with his haul to his nest in the bushes.

This year, he had raised one brood of round speckled robin chicks and was on his second.  As the nesting season wore on, he looked increasingly tired and shabby, and now he too has disappeared.

In both cases, we’ll never know for certain how they met their end, and there is a kindness in that.  It is good to remember both Tear and Robin as we last saw them, waiting on the patio for us to come out and bring them food.  To catch our attention Tear would peck at the window and Robin would tweet loudly. 

And now I think about it, perhaps it was they who had trained us, rather than the other way about.

A flock of one's own

For years I have met my friends every two to three weeks for a walk.  We have it in common that we like to tramp along a footpath and spot interesting features of nature, geology or archaeology.  One of the tenets of our friendship is that we hugely prefer this to shopping or meeting for coffee in the town centre.

Over the Covid period, we would travel in separate cars rather than risk infecting one another, so it was greener to stay close to home.  Our adventures were curtailed, and we beat the same dull muddy bounds again and again.

Over the last few months, however, we’ve started to bundle into one car and go a little further and see a little more.

Recent highlights include a spectacular sunset murmuration of jackdaws, rooks and crows near Wimpole Hall, and a flock of hundreds of fieldfares and redwing devouring ivy berries in a hedgerow near Hitchin.  We also stood in slow-breathing silence as a goldcrest hunted insects on hazel twigs just in front of our noses. 

Last Friday, we spent some time simply puzzling over the curious ice structures which had formed in puddles on a track.  Now that’s my kind of girls’ day out!

Sharing our nest

 

Nigel and I work from home in different rooms.  He is at the back of the house, I the front.  Both of us have been suffering from persistent tapping at the window.  Tiny, hormonally crazed blue tits have been defending their territories against their own reflections.  They have been showing an interest in the nesting boxes fastened in the sheltered nooks of our walls.

On the gable end of our house, in the dove cote, one dove had been sitting on an egg for what seemed like forever and a day.  We had assumed the egg was addled and would never hatch, but she had faith and continued to brood the egg.  Recently, her patience was rewarded by a magnificent young squab.

I would call her ‘plucky’ if ‘plucky’ did not seem rather an insensitive word to apply to a bird.

The only nest we don’t like to see is the magpie nest in a tree which borders our property – the parents rob the nests of songbirds to feed their young.  However, this year, a crow with a single white feather in its tail has been bullying the magpies and they appear to have abandoned their nest. 

Amid all the home-building around us, we have thought about sharing our own nest.  Several weeks ago, we signed up to the Homes for Ukraine scheme and are waiting now to see if our guests are granted visas.  The process seems to be taking forever and a day, but we must keep hoping, just like our plucky dove.

When Birds Watch You Back

Last weekend, it was the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch – the biggest citizen science project.

In previous years we have struggled to fit it in amid the bustle of a January weekend.  This year, however, we were still in isolation following Covid, and it seemed like the epitome of excitement.

We picked an hour towards the end of the day when we knew the little chaps would be mobbing our birdfeeders trying to consume enough calories to see them through a long winter night. 

We spotted most of our regulars – blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, coal tits, dunnocks, robins, goldfinches, woodpigeons and blackbirds.

None of our more unusual visitors surfaced – the nuthatches, woodpeckers and goldcrests must have appeared on somebody else’s entry.

However, the species we saw most was our own doves.  And we also were not prepared for their reaction.  When they saw us sitting in front of the French windows, they came and watched us right back.

We could only guess at their conversation,

‘The two regulars are there – the old ones.’

‘Yes, wonder if we’ll see any of the brightly-plumaged young ones today.’

‘Doesn’t look like it – they must be in a different house today.’

‘That’s always the way – we never see anything out of the ordinary when we do the Big House Human Watch.’

Whatever Happened to Nigel and Clare?

When the children left for University it was the end of twenty-one years of family life. 

We would be brave and stand back while they found their wings.

We expected to be sad, and for a time we were.

But soon we found compensations.

Just to go out on a Saturday and enjoy lunch and a walk with Gill and Graham, Nick and Jackie or Jenny and Terry.  

Without having to make a picnic for my whole voracious family.

We could even afford a pub lunch when it was just two of us.

And then the twins graduated and returned home.

We know it’s temporary, so we are enjoying their company while we have it.

But this Saturday, as we tried to lure them on a day out, Christmas party aftermath overlapped with urgent shopping and they declined blearily.

I was tempted to stay home.

Nigel said “We should still go.”

So we drove to Grafham Water where I proved myself a hopeless nerd by getting overexcited by goldeneye and goosander ducks. The words “Just look at that!” may have been over-used.

Then we explored the twinkly market town of Huntingdon, drifted into a few shops, appreciated a Mediaeval church and bridge. 

As we drove home, I said to Nigel, “That was a good day.”

Meanwhile, the twins had begun to text us. 

Looked like we’d see them tomorrow.

As if we cared!