The blackbirds have been doing a lot of chasing and flapping since Valentine’s Day, (traditionally when all the birds get married), and a few days ago I realised that Mrs Blackbird has started gathering nest materials. I’ve captured some rather wobbly video of her hard at work, but I’m trying not to put her off […]
Last night I sat down to the first 2 episodes of Sarah Raven’s ‘Bees, Butterflies and Blooms‘, and was inspired! Sarah Raven is a well established writer and wildlife gardening expert on a mission to ‘get Britain buzzing‘ again. Over the last few years she has been working hard to persuade us all to help […]
We had a casualty yesterday, a beautiful goldfinch. I didn’t hear the impact, but there were telltale feather fragments stuck to the glass above – a fatal windowstrike. The bird itself was unmarked and exquisite, with velvety red face mask and yellow and black plumes, but unmistakeably dead. The usual advice is to double bag […]
The Blackbirds that arrived to strip my pyracantha a few weeks ago are still around – I’m making it worth their while with offerings of apples and sultanas. It seems that Blackbirds LOVE apples, especially the soft wrinkley ones from the bottom of the fruit pile. I’ve been cutting them in half and leaving them […]
This morning I was rewarded for taking the kettle out to the frozen bird bath when I looked up not much later to see a wren having a drink and a splash. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a wren bathe! The RSPB have quite a few suggestions for keeping the bird bath […]
This week I’ve been watching a team of 4 or 5 blackbirds stripping a heavily laden pyracanther hedge of its crop of bright orange berries. After a few days all that’s left is bare stalks and rotten ones! To be fair the wood pidgeons cleared the more accessible branches back in September, but now the […]
Gardening may be seen elsewhere as an activity for pensioners, with many mainland Europeans choosing apartment lifestyles over houses with gardens. But not in Britain!! Andrea Wulf, author of ‘The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession‘ (2008), describes her amazement on moving from Hamburg to London in the mid ’90s and […]