Rock Cottage Birds

Sometimes I think that Rock Cottage has become the centre for local birds. All winter we have been feeding numbers of many species and even now that they are busy raising their young, they still come back to feed, often bringing their offspring. We have had a brood of six great tits squabbling just like any human siblings, over the peanut feeder and we have finches of all stripes and non, including bull finches, nesting around the garden. Wrens are nesting in the woodshed literally alongside their neighbours the swallows.

The downside to all this is that we also have a resident family of magpies. I am sure they have taken many fledglings but surely it has always been so and many more survive. Our swallows are on their second brood as are several other residents. 

The ravens have bred successfully in the wood and there are buzzards and their young close by, these two uneasy neighbours are often to be seen in aerial disagreement. We have at least one hobby and one sparrow-hawk that feed on 'our' birds. We refuse to be dismayed by this. One cannot pick and choose which bits of nature one approves of and condemn the rest. All nature is one.

Amazing Swallows

I have often marvelled at the skill and speed with which swallows will manoeuvre in and out of narrow holes in buildings to get to their nests. Today there was a swallow event which made me gasp! I was sitting having breakfast in the kitchen. Because of the heat, both the Velux roof lights and the french window were open. When swiftly and almost silently, a swallow curved through the Velux, across the kitchen and out of the french window, passing right in front of me as I ate my toast. I think I was more surprised than the bird, which performed this feat as if it had done it a hundred times. The coolness of perfection! Something to remember. 

Too tame for its own good?

We have an exceedingly tame male blackbird that has almost no fear either of us or of our big dog. Fortunately Kanto has decided long ago that birds are not worth the effort and he and the birds, including our hens, ignore one-another. Cats are another thing! Well worth the chase in Kanto's estimation and for this reason, our neighbouring cats do not visit Rock Cottage. But this blackbird is so totally without any alarm mechanism ,we wonder if his days are numbered. It is not the first year that we have had such a blackbird around the cottage, so this is either the same one or it is the same genetic trait appearing in its offspring. Either way implies survivability. We shall see!