Horrible May!

Yes. Horrible May and the very serious consequences of horrible Mays. This is also going to be a post about what you can do about it (Positivity).

What’s going on? This is the one month of the year that I really look forward to. Also this is the month that nature has decided is the best time to be born into the wild.

Wrong!

So Blue Tits. (Yes and blue toes, it’s freezing, raining and there is a gale blowing)

If you feed the birds regularly then you may have noticed a change in their behaviour in the last couple of weeks. My landlord mentioned it to me, he was talking about the Goldfinches, he is very fond of them, he said, “They don’t seem to come around much now.” In fact they are still here and food is disappearing from the feeders faster than ever but the bird’s visits are much shorter.

They are feeding their newly hatched chicks. They can’t feed them peanuts or sunflower hearts. They need high protein insect food and much of the adult bird’s day is going to be spent feeding it’s young. Putting food out in the garden means that the parents can feed themselves quickly and gives them more time to spend on more important things.

Sadly bad weather in May can have a devastating impact on our song birds. Caterpillars get washed off the trees. There just isn’t enough food around at the very time when it is most needed.

Blue Tits have a large brood, it can be as many as fifteen but eight to ten is more common. Each chick requires about a hundred caterpillars a day. Ten chicks equals a thousand caterpillars a day. They don’t need rain.

Seriously I have seen this weather pattern before and there has been a massive decline in song bird numbers come the summer.

The only thing that we can do to help them is to put out food for the adult birds. Please don’t think that winter is over and they don’t need it any more, they need you now more than ever.

Numbers go up and numbers go down, nature is cruel and whatever happens they will recover but ..

IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE BIRDS IN THE GARDEN THIS SUMMER!

Poxy weather.

Feed the birds. They will love you for it.

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..