Wordless Wednesday: Strange Goings-On At The Bird Feeder

The Garden Nursery

When I was six years old, I loved to tiptoe quietly into the garage to peek at the silhouettes of baby blue tits in the bird box my dad had built into our garage wall. The back of the box was glazed and covered with brown paper which gave the birds a sense of privacy while allowing us the opportunity to see something of their lives. My dad died the following spring, but the seeds of my fascination with the natural world were already sown.

Nowadays we don’t need to head into the garage to see silhouettes of chicks in a nest. For Christmas I received a bird box with a camera in it. I suspect that the gift is part of a cunning plan to encourage domesticity as the nesting box is sited directly opposite the kitchen window under which there is a sink. Since the sink is required to fill the kettle, the domesticity plan has backfired to the point that far from motivating me to attempt kitchen chores, there has been a significant increase in the quantity of time I spend sitting down. I have always drunk coffee on the hoof, but if there is any activity around the bird box while I am filling the kettle, I fire the remote at the television, plonk myself into a chair and ogle the nest while enjoying a lovely warm drink and wondering what Dad would have thought of this wireless camera bird box. 

The nest taking shape

The most astonishing accomplishment of this piece of technology is that it has caught the attention of my own offspring. Instead of the usual fare they enjoy on television, they have been spotted watching nature. Out of choice! Surely this is a healthy form of screen time?

Feathering the nest

From the comfort of the kitchen we have also been watching over a mother who hatched 11 ducklings. The nest is in the lavender which I have yet to cut back after flowering last year. I don’t cut back plants until spring because of the shelter they offer to minibeasts. I hadn't considered that the same plants might offer shelter to much larger creatures. Of course, my lavender tends to fall apart more quickly than it would had I shorn it after flowering, but it is easy to strike cuttings so I always have a ready supply. The courtyard where the ducklings hatched is a former boar pen. In the two years since it was converted into a garden, 22 ducklings have made their way into the world under the cover of the plants.

The garden feels like a dating disco. Our feathered friends are busily pairing off and doing the bird equivalent of The Birdie Song while dancing around their handbags, or in the case of Mr & Mrs Pheasant, tiptoeing through the tulips, (aptly named Tulipa 'Night Club'). At this rate - and with any luck - we will be inundated with offspring!

Mrs P doesn't look impressed. 
Perhaps she doesn't like the tulips.

There is a baby boom in my office too. Since I don't have a greenhouse, the office floor must double up as a nursery. Butternuts, tomatoes, peppers and Cosmos are jostling for light and waiting impatiently to fledge. It is hardly the ideal start for a plant, but they are safer indoors than in the cold frames where they would become frazzled with frost in no time. I rather like sharing my office with them; I only wish that the greenfly hadn't followed them in. The office greenfly are clearly very happy with the food and shelter on offer as they are procreating like it is going out of fashion. One solution will be to bring in the ladybirds. This is all putting a most unlikely slant on the notion of a busy day at the office. 

I am joining with Wildlife Wednesday at https://mygardenersays.com/ Why not pop over there, grab a drink and spend some time marvelling at the wildlife in gardens around the globe?

Wordless Wednesday: Wildlife Habitats (Apparently)

Christopher Columbus meets Walt Disney in the Orchard

There is a curious pattern of behaviour prevalent among gardeners whereby we garden for relaxation, yet we are incapable of sitting down and relaxing in our gardens because some little task will catch our attention and before we know it, we are gardening again. In our house it is known as Gardeners' Relaxation Aversion Syndrome (GRAS). 

Christopher Columbus took the vital first step towards remedying GRAS in Europe by introducing the hammock. When lolling in a hammock, the gardener's eyes are diverted skywards and away from all those little gardening tasks and should a weed be detected, the effort of exiting a hammock in haste is enough to subdue any desire to spring into action. The indigenous people of Middle and South America called the hammock the “cradle of the gods”; I like to think of it as the “cradle of the gardener”. 

A hammock with a view in Tuscany

My own research, involving rigorous relaxation in hammocks and more than a few extremely pleasant garden visits, suggests that the most effective treatment for GRAS involves a combination of hammock and orchard, so in the name of research (along with a passion for growing food and a love of orchards), I have been planting more fruit trees. 

Last year I popped a medlar in the farmhouse garden. I did this because in the seventeenth century, Culpeper credited the medlar with "making joyful mothers". It's a pretty enough thing, but I can't say there has been a significant increase in maternal joy in our house. Perhaps that will change when it fruits. To add to the medlar, we now have apples, pears, plums, gages, cherries, mulberries and quince in the orchard. Anyone might think that Walt Disney was directing the planting, which was overseen by a wise owl

with a pheasant surveying posts

and Sprout doing the fetching and carrying....(and no, we didn’t whistle while we worked). 

Planting trees is an investment in the future. These saplings are unlikely to support fruit for a year or two, let alone a hammock cradling a chocoholic welly-shod gardener, so I am going to plant a couple of sturdy, highly secured posts adorned with honeysuckle to support my cradle. Of course, the probability of finding my dream cradling device - the heated hammock - is about the same as the likelihood of the pheasant fitting on the seed feeder, but we shall both remain optimistic.

Come spring, I will lie in my hammock in an orchard filled with bird song and apple blossom. Mr and Mrs Pheasant and their jolly brood of young will parade past Sprout as he slumbers contentedly in the meadow grass under the watchful gaze of the wise owl. I will close my eyes and give thanks for Christopher Columbus' discovery and its soothing influence on GRAS, before leaping from my cradle in an ungainly fashion as GRAS reminds me that the lawn needs mowing.