A bird in the hand.......

I have talked about the garden's bird life and right now it must be at its peek. I understood that the Blue Tits should have all fledged several weeks ago, well my garden has no truck with such nonsense. Over the last few weeks we have had fledgling Blue Tits, Great Tits, Blackbirds, Green finches and Gold Finches all in and around our three little cherry trees. The parent Blue & Great Tits look particularly knackered and in most cases the fluffy fledglings all look bigger than their parents.

Every thing coming up smelling of roses.

 The Goldfinches are feasting on the shelled sunflower  seeds that I have put into the bird feeder and are even fighting off the Greenfinches. But here you can see they are pulling rank over the female Goldfinches and are making it quite clear that the girls should shove off.












 

I have only seen Percy the limping Pheasant once since he met a girlie but the birds of the year have been the Spotted Flycatchers which have completely taken over my attention, they are simply fascinating to watch. The pair have now laid and hatched their eggs to three, very noisy, little chicks and the feeding has been frantic. Despite all the different people using the garden, my mowing and too-ing & fro-ing they have doggedly carried on doing what parents do... shovelling food down their offspring's throats every moment of the day.

I have watched these Flycatchers and indeed as most of those that know me I have taken a lot of photos too. The parents use just 4 or 5 branches and perches to launch themselves off as they snap up a fly. Strangely they will rarely share a perch for more than a fleeting moment and if one lands on a perch whilst the other is on it the original occupant will swiftly more to another perch. They are an avian 'Tag-Team' if you will. The pair were continuosly flitting around the garden all day long.

I'm afraid that I am about to display a lot of photographs now. Most of them will be small but I would suggest that it is well worthwhile clicking on one of them to open the 'slide show' then look at them each a lot bigger as I am really pleased with the pictures.

A rare shot of the pair together on their favourite branch

They sit patiently watching for the movement of a fly or wasp or such like, then zoom they shoot off the branch reaching full flight speed in only 1 second within 3-4 seconds they are back on a perch with a fly firmly in their beak. They do have a habit of showing off what the have caught by sitting on the perch and keeping the stunned fly firmly in their beaks for sometimes over a minute or two. Sometimes the male gives his partner his catch from mouth to mouth. Perhaps I should try this with Alison, it would get the bacon rind from between my teeth!

 Of course once the chicks had hatched then the lions share was going into the nest.











I have been at great pains to keep away from the nest despite it being head height in my grape vine. I couldn't even prune the thing. However I did snap a few photos using my telephoto lens, paparazzi style (don't tell Levison). It is a very small nest built between the cottage wall and a thick vine branch and well hidden by vine leaves but in the darkness I could see three fat little Flycatcher chicks looking quite grumpy until they saw me then they instinctively opened their mouths wide for food in the hope that I had a dragon fly or something.
I withdrew.

 FEED ME!

So there we were. A happy family. The birds spending hours and hours posing for photographs, so I had to oblige.

On the mock orange

Strutting his stuff for his 'lady friend'.

On my trellis. What ever they perch on they poop on!

Still it gives the Loganberry jam an added zing!

Chewing on the Cherry Tree.

On the bird table.

In the Fig tree.

Now, and here I may not be believed and I leave myself open to being labelled a fantasist as the odds of what I saw next was beyond belief...
I came out of the back-door porch and a large bird shot over my head and straight across the branch most commonly used as a perch by the Flycatchers (the one shown just above, right). In an instant it was past this and as it swooped low over the garden wall I could swear that it had something in its talons. It was so fast that I cannot tell you what bird it was but only that it was a falcon, possibly a Kestrel. For once the garden was completely hushed with no birdsong whatsoever. The continual flow of birds to my bird feeders had ceased and no birds could be seen anywhere. There was silence. I immediately told Alison what I had seen and that I felt it might have taken a Flycatcher as it had gone right into the twig they perch on and which they fight off intruders from as this Goldfinch found to it's cost....

Only time would tell and so we went on with our lives and within 10 minutes most of the birds had reappeared along with the birdsong. Then the familiar sound of the Flycatcher brought me out to see my old friend, just the one bird but it was chirping away. A week passed and neither of us saw two Flycatchers at the same time. This was the longest that I had not done so and my heart became heavy with sadness for  it is looking more and more likely that perchance I happened to witness a killing! The trouble with the Flycatchers is that they move so swiftly that there can seem to be three or four of them sometimes, but it is an illusion and so I was not sure if I was just seeing one at a time or indeed if there was just the one bird, the problem is they do, did, look very similar to each other.

So there you have it. I think I witnessed a falcon taking out a Spotted Flycatcher just 4 yards from me. The other parent sings like crazy (perhaps in anguish) but between chirps it does feed the chicks. I suppose they may have had a row and she's gone off back to Africa to stay with her mother but at the moment it is an open verdict

The last photo with the pair together....

NOW THE TWIST...  Yep, after that, there's more.....

I came home from the allotment and noticed that the chicks chirping noise was no longer from the nest, which was strange as they looked far too small to be flying. Then I saw one of them on the lawn, looking desperate and forlorn, it was drenched from the pouring rain and calling to it's lone parent for food. I could hear both the other chicks calling but could not establish where they were.

I watched the lone adult trying to feed the chicks but the heavy rain meant there were few flies about and feedings were far and few between, although the chick on the floor did get fed a couple of times.

The feeding's were getting less and although I had locked my cat away we have had other cats and even stoats visit our garden, this chick was in grave danger now. You need to understand that this bird is at a RED status with the RSPB as it is in serious decline in Britain.

I really had no idea what I should do and Alison suggested we phone the North Norfolk wildlife trust to see if we should put it back into the nest.  I was given a contact number for a local rescue sanctuary that specialises in birds that have fallen from their nests ( http://www.wingandaprayerhaven.org.uk/home.html ) they instructed me to put it into the nest. When I explained that there was only one adult feeding them it was explained to me that chicks often leave the nest prematurely when they are not getting enough food. If feeding's were not happening every 30 seconds or so then these birds were in danger of starving and I should take them to their haven where they would hand rear them.

The last time that I or the chick saw the parent.

I put the lone chick back in the nest, all the other chicks had gone too. Within ten minutes this little guy was stuck on the lawn again and one other was flapping around the Cobnut and just managing to flap to the neighbouring Cherry tree. I saw the third one fly over our garden wall, it barely made it.

We decided to gather the other two up and take them to the rescue centre in the hope that the parent was still around and would hear the chirping of the one over the wall and put all of it's energy into feeding that one.
Alison organised the shoe box and I easily caught the grounded bird but despite the extremely repetitive high pitched chirping it took us ages to locate the second. Alison finally saw it on top of the Patio parasol and I sneaked up behind it and  captured it. It was tiny.

I then rushed them over to the sanctuary where they explained that they had never had Flycatchers before but they knew how to feed them (like Swifts apparently) and that when they are old enough I would need to take them back and release them from our garden as they need to be in habitat that it is known they can live in. Then in August they will migrate back to Africa or Asia. I can phone up and find out how they are doing (Not Africa, I mean the sanctuary silly) so I shall let you know in due course.

And now my garden feels empty. Alison and I both notice this and we miss the birds on their twig chirping away daily, swooping and diving as they catch a fly or two.



Perhaps one of their kids will return and start a family next year, who knows?

Add caption

Now if you click on the first photo on the blog (the Blue Tits head) then you will be able to see all the photos full size in a slide show format.


http://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/Documents/Species-Leaflets/WF_Spotted_Flycatcher.pdf

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/spottedflycatcher/index.aspx



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And it's not easy working with him!

Three weeks into my gardening leave and now renamed as allotment leave, my mind is beginning to adjust to the different challenges of being a co-owner of a business and working alongside Mike. But all will be well, for this week Claire will return for a month and he will be out-numbered!

Aside from the sudden medical crisis referred to in Mike's last blog (at no point did I believe he had anything stuck in his ear), it has been another full on week of cooking, cleaning, weeding and converting fruit into saleable items.

Little progress has been made from the point of view of finding alternative employment and I've decided to concentrate on helping Mike for the next two months, then taking a short break before concentrating on the next stage of my career. Although some people think it is all over; this week I had my first letter addressed 'Dear Pensioner' ...aaagh!

But to keep my mind active, I've started my own blog. Pause here to allow you to groan when you find out that it is on all matters 'development'. Well, what else did you expect?

You'll find it here: www.gladstonedevelopment.blogspot.co.uk I've been busy with four posts already, the most recent of which makes comparisons between the corporate world and our fledgling cottage industry.

Hard at work on a Sunday morning (we work 7 days a week!)

The first varieties of the season....

Another auction find... for displaying the finished items (once it has been stripped and repainted, one of this week's jobs)

It's not easy being Me.

I awoke with a start. There was something wrong, something wasn't quite right. I looked at the alarm clock and it was still an hour before we had planned to get up. Alison was still happily asleep, but that wasn't going to last for very much longer.

What, I struggled to surmise, is bothering me as my different senses slowly re-awakened one by one. Then I gradually became aware of an odd sensation in my infamous right ear and with it an overwhelming sense of deafness. It felt like I had something well and truly stuffed down into the lug-hole.

I gave it a bit of a tug and tried to feel inside the ear with my fat oversized finger tips but that was just futile and still I remained deaf in that ear. It was becoming clear that something was well and truly stuck in my ear and I have to say that I didn't like it one little bit. What could possibly get stuck into an ear whilst I was asleep? I thought to myself and as I lay there fiddlin' and fussin' with my ear (to no avail) and as I thought, my eye sight came to rest upon the small earpieces of the head phones that I sometimes listen to the radio with as I drop off so as not to disturb Alison. ONE OF THE BLACK PADS WAS MISSING and with a cruel twist of irony I now felt compelled to disturb Alison's sleep.

"Alison are you awake?"

"Alison are you awake?!

"Alison wake up"

"ALISON WAKE UP.....   MY HEADPHONE SPEAKERS STUCK IN MY EAR!!!!"

With this loving welcome to a new dawn and how did you sleep my darling greeting Alison stirred (not fast enough in my opinion).

In her still dozy state she struggled to come to terms with my situation.... "You've got a what stuck in your where?" she sleepily tried to clarify.

"I think that the black pad from the earpiece has come off and gone deep into my ear hole, and I NEED to get it out.....  NOW!" At this point Alison started to show the sort of interest that I felt my perdicament respected and she took a peek into the ear. "It's just a dark hole" she muttered, "THAT is because the pad is BLACK" I exclaimed. "We need to get it out before it goes further in." I demanded.

I had read once about a boy that had become deaf in one ear for many, many years he lived with this curse until one day as an adult a bus ticket fell out and he was cured. Well I didn't want to become that person...

Alison trying to be the voice of reason asked if I was sure that the earpiece hadn't just fallen off and was it lying around somewhere. "Where? Look..... It's nowhere, and my ear feels stuffed and totally deaf!" I had already realised what has happened by now in that the soft foam was forced into my ear as I lay on it and then somewhat like an umbrella in Tom & Jerry the thing popped open wedging itself well and truly and muffling all sounds at the same time. Oh God, I thought, not another bloody trip to the hospital!

One of us came up with the idea of tweezers and so we put on our dressing gowns and headed downstairs to use the bright directionable light. Alison fetched the tweezers and then we had to have a sort of shuffle with me Alison the sofa and the Ikea lamp in order that we could get the position just right in that she could look directly into the dark depths of my ear. So there we were in our dressing gowns looking for all the world that we were playing some weird (and perhaps a tad kinky) three dimensional game of sofa Twister. Just then one of the guests came down the stairs.....

Not really! But how funny would that have been and wouldn't that have made for an interesting Trip Advisor comment!

Alison gingerly placed the tweezers in my ear. I squealed like a child and immediately had second thoughts having read (after my last ear issue) that you should NEVER stick anything inside your ears and that you should always seek medical advice. Alison swore that she could not see anything in the ear and I reiterated my point that IT IS VERY VERY BLACK. But to prove my point I agreed to go back to the bedroom to try to find the black pad and so off we trecked back up stairs again leaving behind a quite bemused and bewildered cat who had been sitting on the other sofa quietly watching the whole scene unfold.

I don't know if it was the change in altitude as we ascended the stairs or just the standing on my head on the sofa but something caused a pop in the ear and all of a sudden the world was back in stereo again. Leading the way up the stairs I discreetly manipulated my ear and everything went muffled again, then with another rub.. back to stereo. I felt in the ear and that all too unpleasant ear wax attached itself to my finger, ahhhh, I thought, I need to manage myself out of this now.

When we got to the bedroom and probably because I now believed that the pad was not in my ear I quickly found the thing sitting on the bedside table. I could tell that Alison was not impressed with me as she had both lost her lay-in and had to partake in quite literally a bedroom farce there was, I confess, a slight 'awkwardness' and now we rarely talk of the 'Eargate' incident.






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Sorry out at the allotment back soon....