Three Little Birds

I’ve said elsewhere that our garden is a wildlife paradise. Turns out that the house is, too.

I often see our family of robins just outside the kitchen door, by the hen house. I’ve taken to shaking the hen feeder when I take it out in the morning, to get rid of the bits of wood chip and other crap that the ladies kick up into it, and when I do, some bits of feed fall out, and the robins don’t object at all. In fact, I think they’ve come to expect it.

It does mean that we often have to duck as we go out the kitchen door and a flash of brown and red does the Red Arrows thing very close to our heads. I apologize to them, but they don’t seem to mind and I certainly don’t.

The robins and the sparrows take turns in keeping watch from a random buddleia bush that is growing on top of a high wall next to the road. Sometimes they’re there together. Recently I’ve noticed a wren join them. We often hear wrens around the garden but have rarely otherwise seen them. They are very small, after all.

Last winter I realized that the jasmine that I keep trying to get control of has pulled away part of the soffit (the board under the eaves) above the garage. I didn’t get round to nailing it back up, and the other day we noticed significant cheeping coming from that direction. Then we saw a couple of wrens flying in and out of the gap in the soffit.

So we have a family of wrens making their home in our house. The babies are quiet most of the time, but when mum or dad appear they start up with the cheeping.

Again, I don’t mind, but at some point when they’ve fledged I’m going to have to get my ladder out and see if I need to fix the roof. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.