Gardening on a recent warm day, I was accompanied by a pair of robins. One was much braver than the other and came within a couple of feet, checking whether I had turned up any tasty morsels. These two are clearly a pair and will shortly be nest building, ready for egg laying in the second half of March. Birds as different as tawny owls, mistle thrushes and rooks are also early starters and will be sitting on eggs by the middle of the month. Our golden plovers are still with us on Spring Hill, but in smaller groups than before. We have also seen many flocks of fieldfare and redwing around the village.
In the last month there have been a growing number of flocks of starlings around us. In bright sunlight these look stunning. A very special sighting on Spring Hill was a flock of fifty lapwings heading west. It is many years since we saw these nesting here, but fingers crossed. We also have our fingers crossed that we will have wrens in one of our nest boxes, as we did last year. The male wren will build up to ten nest ‘shells’ known as ‘cock nests’, and then try to get a female to accept one of them. They will then work together to complete the nest before egg laying starts in early April .
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