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 Good Time For Covid?

Nigel and I have been laid low by Covid, presumably the Omicron variant.

Since I have been working in secondary schools and he has attended the odd meeting in central London, this highly contagious variant did seem unavoidable.

Long country walks are something we consider essential to happiness, but at the moment we are confined indoors.

So I have been consoling myself that if there was one good time of year to be trapped at home, then this is it – ten dry, cold, overcast January days, with daylight fleeting early.

The very countryside has appeared dormant.

Yet as I have begun to feel better, I can see how wrong I have been.

Whenever the sun shows its face, I hear birdsong, led by our robins, but including a swelling number of other species.  Blue tits are showing a great deal of interest in our nest boxes.

Our doves have begun to vie for the best nest sites in our dove cote.

Each night, foxes rend the air with their barks.

Even the hedgehog which we have been fostering this winter seems to have no interest in hibernating.

So when I finally get the all-clear to leave the house, the first intimations of spring will be awaiting me with open arms.

Video of Nigel feeding robin by Carenza

Blue tit photo by david Griffiths on Unsplash