We’ve lots of new baby birds, including two Goldfinch youngsters. We’ve had the occasional Goldfinch in the garden before but they’ve been very shy and have always flown away when they’ve seen us. The two babies, though, seem not to be bothered by us (though we’ve not opened the door or stepped outside when they’ve been here.)
Beaky (the blackbird – related to the one on my blog background) is very demanding these days. He is feeding his own offspring and comes too frequently for food. When we don’t feed him quickly, he goes through a series of nagging actions, starting with singing his two repetitive ‘food needed’ phrases, then he hops onto the ground near the dining room doors, then if that doesn’t work, he hops on a nearby brick (unfortunately my husband has been encouraging this and nearly all the birds have learnt it from each other! Birds are great mimics, not only of song but of actions, particular when it gets them results). If singing and standing on the brick don’t work, he then sits on the kitchen windowsill (the window is not open, thankfully – I can just imagine his delight if he could get into the kitchen!) and glares in at one of us. And if that doesn’t work, he either walks up and down the kitchen windowsill or the edge of the dining room French doors, or he flies up and down in front of them and bashes himself into the window. (He doesn’t hurt himself, he’s learnt to do it hard enough to make a noise and attract our attention but not hard enough to give himself concussion.) However… a few days ago, he excelled himself for nagging behaviour by first flying past my husband twice, at head level and then when that didn’t work, he deliberately flew into him!
We’ve a new Robin that behaves rather like our old friend Hasslebob (who is long gone, sadly.) He (or she) landed on the dining room door handle the other day, and has been begging for food – coming right up to the door and waiting. Both the Robin and our two friendly chaffinches only want one or two suet pellets each and then they’re happy.
And so it goes on… and on…
And, while I am still ‘blogging when I want to‘, I’m also going to take a break from my blog and from social media for the next week or two, so I won’t be answering comments here, commenting in other blogs or posting here til I return. I’ll also be having a break from Twitter and Facebook.
Oh and I’ve turned Likes on just for this post. (Comments are on too, but I won’t moderate then til I return, so you won’t see any for this post until then.)
Before I go though, I want to thank the people who took up the challenge in my previous post with their writing. If you’ve written a story or poem for this that I’ve not yet seen, please comment beneath that post with a link to it and I’ll read it when I get back.
See you later. Be well.
