Garden

Busy in the garden today - a bright and sunny one, and at times while I was out there, I was all but deafened by birdsong. Blackbirds especially were singing very competitively, and from time to time meeting up to battle physically as well as vocally, though usually that amounted to no more than a bit of hostile wing-flapping. Yesterday, though, as I drove along a country lane, I was able to watch two blackbirds continually trading places: one would be perching on the top of the hedge, the other in the lane, then the one in the lane would fly up and displace the other down into the lane. The two birds swapped places about four times before my vehicle got too close and they both flew off.

The wood behind our garden was alive with birds all day. I was delighted to see a wren exploring the base of the old elm just behind us in quite a proprietorial way. There's quite a lot of brush and other cover just there, so that could be a nesting site. In a previous garden we had around twelve newly fledged wrens zooming about in all directions, and it would be nice to repeat that experience. I am pretty sure I saw a sparrow hawk drift across, but it was only a glance and I can't be sure. Up to five buzzards were riding the thermals high overhead, and two herons flew across, my gaze attracted by their harsh cry. They nested not far away last year, I think.

The woodland falls away sharply behind our garden to the stream below, the drop being I suppose some twenty-five to thirty feet. The heavy rain last winter has taken away some of the bank, and local pet dogs from along the road have been burrowing in where the ground is disturbed, so I've been trying to rebuild and stabilise things, not that I think there is any danger of major ground movement. Access into the wood is easy, via the gate pictured below; movement through the wood is much harder as the bank sides are so steep, so the wildlife is more or less undisturbed, except for the busy dogs that are occasionally let loose there.

I love gates, which to me always carry with them a flavour of possibility and opportunity. The one in my picture at the title of this blog is in one of my favourite places, Arnside Knot, on the edge of the Lake District and overlooking Morecambe Bay and the Kent Estuary - the picture was taken on my last visit there some two years ago.