Older readers may remember the feature Nest Watch, which appeared on this blog in March of last year. In it, I observed a pair of magpies painstakingly dismantling an old nest (or, as a reader suggested, a squirrel’s dray) and reassembling it into a new nest higher up the tree. At about the time the nest [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Birds’
Ornithology With Orwell
Posted in Birds, Nature, Trains, Trees, tagged Birds, City of London, George Orwell, Magpies, Nest Watch, Spring, Trees on February 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Swann Struggles To Grip Wet Ball
Posted in Birds, Nature, tagged Birds, Graeme Swann, Leicestershire, Swans on September 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Or, how to eat an apple without using your hands. Some useful techniques here if you’re planning to do any apple-bobbing at Halloween.
Empty Nest Syndrome (with Louis MacNiece)
Posted in Animals, Arts, Birds, Nature, Poetry, Trees, tagged Birds, City of London, Louis MacNiece, Nest Watch, Poetry, Spring, Trees on May 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
What of the nest? The nest itself is now harder to see through the fresh green leaves – and, since the incident with the crows, I’ve only seen the magpies once more. Perhaps they are lying low and incubating their eggs, or perhaps they’ve been reading Louis MacNiece – In a between world, a world [...]
I Watched A Blackbird : Thomas Hardy
Posted in Arts, Birds, Christianity, Nature, Poetry, Religion, tagged Birds, Easter, Nests, Thomas Hardy on April 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
What to do for Easter? I had some rather attractive pictures of The Man of Sorrows from my brief holiday in Spain, but these are presumably still somewhere at Wantage Road with my lost camera. I tried to Share a video of Easter Parade, by the Blue Nile, but it didn’t want to be shared. [...]
Nest Watch Extra : A Crow In The Ointment
Posted in Arts, Birds, Nature, Poetry, Trees, tagged Birds, City of London, Poetry, Spring, Ted Hughes on April 13, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Unwelcome news, I’m afraid, from our nest. Yesterday morning I arrived at work to find two large crows squatting in our magpies’ laboriously constructed nest. The magpies gamely tried to expel them, but all their flapping and chattering were to no avail. It’s hard to know whether the crows were aiming to annex the nest for [...]
Stump Watch and Nest Watch – Together At Last!
Posted in Architecture, Arts, Birds, Crime, Nature, This England, Trees, tagged Birds, Little Bowden, Nest Watch, Spring, Stump Watch, Trees, Vandalism on April 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I promised dramatic developments in the continuing story of the stump and – as you will see – this was no idle boast. You may remember that – a few months ago – I noted the arrival of a sort of official alternative to our feral stump, in the shape of a young sapling (a beech, [...]
“Bred in Darkness” : the Kingfisher of Little Bowden Returns
Posted in Arts, Birds, Fiction, Nature, tagged Birds, D.J. Watkins-Pitchford, Flora Thompson, Kingfishers, Little Bowden, Nests, Spring on March 27, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The other big news this week in the fast moving world of bird life, is another sighting of the Kingfisher of Little Bowden. First thing Tuesday morning there he – or she – was, sitting on the river bank near to the bridge. When he saw me, of course, he shot off under the bridge and [...]
Nest Watch : Week Two
Posted in Birds, Crime, Nature, Photography, tagged Birds, City of London, Crime, Nests, Spring, Whimsy on March 26, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I must admit that, last week, I was feeling a little pessimistic about the prospects for our pair of nesting pies. If Robert the Bruce had sat and watched them instead of the spider I fear he would have concluded that if at first he didn’t succeed it was probably best to call it a day. [...]
Nest Watch : Week One
Posted in Architecture, Arts, Birds, Nature, Trees, tagged Birds, City of London, Nests, Spring, Whimsy on March 19, 2011 | 2 Comments »
So – I hear you ask – how are our magpies getting on with their nest-building project? Well, they’ve been at it all week (except Monday, which they seemed to have taken off). They’ve certainly been hard at the work thinning out the old nest – and carrying the twigs to the site of the [...]
Nest Watch and Postcards to Nesta continued
Posted in Birds, History, Nature, Trees, tagged Birds, Birds' eggs, Nesta Hughes, Spring, Trees on March 12, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Some significant new developments in the two big stories of the week on this blog – Nest Watch and Postcards to Nesta. There have been clear signs of nest-related activity from the pair of magpies. At first it seemed possible that they were – as it were – preparing the old nest for some new arrivals, but [...]
