One of the great things this year has been the amount of birdage we've seen in our garden. We have fed them all mealworms, seeds, grains and leftover catfood and as a result, we're now pretty much living in an aviary: dunnocks, wrens, tits, wood pigeons, turtles, blackbirds, starlings, finches, jackdaws, magpies, jays and even songthrushes. These past ten days, all the fledglings have come out to sit and chirp cutely in our trees and be fed. I suspect the parents feel quite safe leaving them there because Neuroticat, our remaining resident cat who is 18 years old, is fading, completely deaf and only occasionally bimbling out into the garden now. She never was one for fighting, one of the most placid kitties you can imagine, so the other visiting cats are always shooed off the property by me as soon as I spot them lurking -- one of them is a hedgeclimber and nestrobber, the little **** -- maybe they'll get the message soon.
OH and I were in the room when one of the songthrush fledglings mistimed its flightpath and thunked into the upstairs window. It sat on the roof of the extension for a couple of minutes, a bit dazed and confused, so confused that it let us stroke its belly, although it wouldn't take any dried mealworms. Then it took off again, seemingly unharmed. We saw him and his sibling again in our birch tree a few days later, waiting to grab some ex-catfood, so all was well.
No comments:
Post a Comment