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Breezing the shoot. Random mutterings of a Web Developer. » The Pigeon Conundrum

I’ve spent the last 6 months gardening. No, I’m not a gardening fanatic, it just became a necessity. You see I started several projects at the same time, never a good idea as you never actually finish any of them but I had figured that the bathroom needed a complete revamp. The bath was ripped out and moved to a far more sensible position, which meant shifting the toilet, which left room to install a freestanding shower unit. This required removal of all the wall tiles which of course meant half the wall came down with them so replastering was required.

This was where I had got to when it became clear that if I didn’t attack the garden fairly soon I’d have to mount an expedition to find the shed.

When I bought the house the garden contained a number of very large trees. In an effort to do a bit of landscaping I’d planted a succession of shrubs and annuals, all of which had succumbed to the lack of water and nutrients. Over the years, more and more things had been planted in an effort to get a cottage garden. All attempts had failed. Then one of the trees died. For no obvious reason.

I got in a tree surgeon who removed it. He also pointed out that some of the other trees were getting a bit dangerous, so we took the decision to have several of them felled. Down came two 40 foot high Beech trees and an inappropriately placed acer. Next door took the opportunity to get him to remove a large willow that was growing at an increasingly alarming angle. For the first time there was space and light getting in to both gardens.

This coincided with a very wet year, yes, we even had floods. The upshot of all this was that the previously ailing planting that had been crammed in now had all the light, nutrients and water it could possibly need and decided to make up for years of lack of growth.

At first it looked really good but it soon became apparent that things were getting totally out of hand. Decision time. Complete the bathroom or attack the garden.

Working on the basis that the bathroom would stay exactly as it was if left alone; OK, so the dust might accumulate but I wasn’t going to walk in there one morning to find mini toilets sprouting up all over the place, and the old tiles weren’t going to start throwing up patches of new tiles on the ceiling; but the garden, which was now revelling in an extremely wet year and going for glory, would soon resemble something from the jungles of South America, it was a no-brainer. So garden it was.

Six months though? Well I can never do things by halves. I decided to “do a proper job” and so out came everything. Borders cleared and replanted, hours of digging out deep roots. Pond moved (4 days with a pick axe, don’t ask) gravel paths, new retaining walls and on and on. I’m almost finished.

So after all that rambling, back to the title of this post.

The interesting part of all this external activity has been the getting closer to nature bit. I discovered I have hedgehogs, so I put in some houses for them, got a mini camera and installed that in the garden and can watch their nightly activities which are hilarious. All through the winter we put out food for them until they finally hibernated, by which time we noticed that the birds were making good use of the leftovers so we continued leaving stuff out for them.

This spring resulted in a bumper crop of nests. We’ve successfully raised and fledged 6 baby Robins, 26 or so Starlings, 4 Blackbirds and an indeterminate number of Blue Tits. I say indeterminate as counting them is near impossible. You suddenly hear a twittering cacophony and find you are being buzzed by little blue and yellow blurs, heading in all directions at considerable speed. They never stop on anything long enough to count them before they’re off again. I’ve nicknamed them TiT33 Squadron.

The male Blackbird cottoned on to the fact that I was putting out a handful of sultanas each morning and came to rely on them being there. When they ran out he decided to chance his luck and started to land near me, scream and shout, jump up and down and generally be a nuisance until I went and got him some more. As time moved on, he came and tapped on the window if I was indoors, played injured bird (stand on one leg or sit on the floor with one wing outstretched) if he thought that would get me out there faster, and finally, left one of the babies with me while he flew backwards and forwards feeding the other one that was still in the nest. I spent a happy half hour sitting on the wall dropping currants down the baby’s throat.

The Robin has got so used to me being out there he now sits on my foot while I’m digging so he can grab any worms the instant they appear. He too brings in his babies and lines them up on the fence near to where I’m working so that he only has a short hop to ram his spoils in their open mouths.

There were also two adult Wood Pigeons. I saw them mating; a kamikaze process that involves the male attempting to mount the female in the most precarious places he can find, usually the apex of a roof, giving the amazing spectacle of what looks for all the world like piggy-back ski jumping pigeons. I was expecting to see cartoon style smoke coming from the female’s feet as they slid down the tiles. I saw them build the nest. I saw them egg sitting. Now there are three adults. So here’s the conundrum…… why do you never see a baby pigeon?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 6:39 am and is filed under Random Mutterings, Green Issues. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.

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