After the arrival of the first swallows and house martins by mid-April, the swifts arrived just before the end of that month and started their lovely ‘screaming’ flight, high in the sky on sunny evenings. Although the cuckoo was reported nearby earlier in the month, it was first heard here on April 29th, as was the sedge warbler. There now seem to be two cuckoos that have taken up residence – one in the Seven Bridges area, and one to the west near the Manor.
Seven Bridges is wonderfully busy with grasshopper warblers, sedge warblers, willow warblers, blackcaps and many others in full song.
June is pretty much the peak time for eggs being laid and hatching. For most of our garden and other small birds the incubation of eggs takes about two weeks. Once hatched, we see two very different kinds of chicks. Waterfowl like ducks and geese, chickens, and pheasants all produce well developed and highly mobile youngsters. These are the super cute fluffy chicks that we all like, with eyes open and able to feed themselves from day one.
Most of our garden birds produce naked, blind, and completely helpless chicks that are totally dependent on their parents for all the necessities of life. Typically, a pair of blue tits, with up to fourteen young, can mean up to five hundred excursions for each bird, every day, for up to nineteen days. Extraordinary!
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