Following on from my last blog about hedgehog hibernating in the shelter I went down to the bottom of the garden at dusk to check for occupant activity. I was regaled with a fearsome snorting and eventually found the source in the undergrowth, a male hog foraging outside the shelter I’d set up a few years back. If the source of the grunting wasn’t known I’d have felt fear in my bones as it had a positively ghost like disembodied quality. On the way back to the house, going round a corner into spilt light from a window, the form of another hedgehog came into view. Wow! two sightings in one night. This one appears slightly smaller than the first. A female, I wondered? Is there a possible mating scenario in progress? Who knows, am just happy to have helped provide a home for these endearing and endangered species.
They’re back. The first swallows have arrived, or rather we made our first positive identification, on Tuesday 23rd. That’s earlier by a week than last year. There has been aerial aggro since as rival pairs clash in the course of scoping the best nesting sites under our roofed deck. Earlier this year we took down the last nest built for a late brood outside the main house entrance on the yard side. The parents took flight every time anyone entered or left with a noisy flurry of cheeps. Their mud and grasses stick on structures are things of beauty. We want the adult birds to set up their summer homes instead in the usual sites they normally favour, time honoured spots under the deck eaves or high in the old railway goods carriage that serves as our garden hut.
Discovering old nests in the garden long after being abandoned is always a delight. The James Grieve apple espalier has become such a spreader over the south wall of the house that its summer foliage effectively disguised the presence for the first time of a blackbird’s nest, its rough weave now gradually unravelling.
In a nearby apple tree, whose branches hang over the roadside, a pair of garden birds (possibly goldfinches) had fabricated a delicate looking but stubbornly resilient nest of grasses and moss secured with spiders webs in the branch fork.
This season a male wren has taken possession of an open sided box under the eaves of the garage/workshop, stuffing it chock full of moss. The cock bird will make a number of nests in various locations and his jenny will make her choice of the most suitable in which to lay her clutch of eggs. Haven’t spotted any other would be homes yet so hope this might be the des res decided on so we can watch their progress from a distance.
Footnote. For someone not over endowed with higher level technical skills I am rendered content by slowly getting simple rustic constructions in place outdoors. Selecting and lashing together coppiced branches for the beans and peas gives a small satisfying feeling at the end of an afternoon’s work in the garden.
STEPHEN TOMLIN 