Happy Families

After a beautiful spring we've had storms & rain, which was much appreciated by the garden!

It hasn't slowed the birds down as they are producing families all over the place.

The Great Tits have returned to the old pot-bellied barbecue and raised a family and another pair have raised a brood in the nest box on the walnut tree.
I suppose that as we use the expression "to flee the nest" to mean leaving in a more or less permanent way we assume it's the same with birds, but not so!

The Great Tit young follow their parents around seemingly for weeks, demanding to be fed, preferably with live food; they are particularly demanding in the morning.

We saw parent Nuthatches also feeding their two offspring. One of the parents would take a sunflower seed from the bird feeder to its favourite "anvil" in the same tree, crack it open and feed the young with the kernel.

One evening we saw a strange bird near the feeders; Jo said it looked like a Robin from its size and stance, but it was brown and pale-brown shading to yellow. We checked in the book and it was, of course, a young Robin. Apparently they get their red breast at the end of the year!

The cherry trees have been laden with fruit, much more than we could hope to pick, though we did manage to get a lot. The birds loved the abundance, especially a Spotted Woodpecker, who would pick his cherry and fly off to eat it at leisure.

All is well with our birds save for the Ring Doves. One of our resident pairs was killed by next door's cat last autumn and now there appear to be three. This occasions much agitated fluttering and squawking, so we hope they'll settle it peacefully!