BIRD - BRAINED? I THINK NOT!

Graham reports on the sheer bravado of some of his bird life.

I have often written of my love of birds, their antics and their habits. Now for sheer effrontery and bravado, one has to hand it to a pair of thrushes that have built a nest in the fork of a bird-cherry tree right outside our front door. Further to that, we can also look into the nest from our bedroom window. When constructed, the nest was completely in the open for all to see. Now that the leaves and the blossom are staring to appear on the tree, it is gradually becoming hidden. Did the birds know this would happen, and if so, how? It certainly would have been a suicidal place to try and raise chicks without the now-descending cover.

But birds do build nests in remarkable places. We also have blackbirds making their nest behind the coalbunker outside the back door (this is for the second year). We have also had robins raising six chicks on the ground at the base of a pear tree, two sets of wrens bringing up families inside an old outbuilding alongside two pairs of blackbirds who did the same. Once again, blue tits are nesting in the house wall - they struggle through between a window frame and the brickwork (it's a very small gap!) - and the grasshopper warblers have returned to set up home in a large clump of bamboo outside the kitchen. However, the most daring were the spotted flycatchers who nested right outside the back door on a recess left by a missing half brick, two years running.

It will always be a wonder to me how their various instincts direct them to solving their accommodation problems. I suppose that it is just yet another miracle of nature.

Graham Forster