On 2013-09-05 21:00:01 +0100, Christina Websell said:

"sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2013-09-02 06:33:37 +0000, Martin Brown said:

On 01/09/2013 23:30, Sacha wrote:
We take quite a keen interest in the wildlife around us and like to
think we're reasonably observant of what is going on in our garden.
About a week ago, I was woken, panicking, by terrific scrabbling noises
outside our bedroom window at about 4.30am. I jumped out of bed, peered
out, saw nothing, shut the window, back to sleep. Next morning, I took
a harder, closer look and where I had often seen what I thought was just
a rather dumb and dozy pigeon, sitting around being a pigeon, there was
a nest with two little heads poking out of it! They cannot be more than
4' away from our opened window but they are in among some quite heavy
growth of a climbing rose and are well sheltered from weather and
predators, I would think. The babies now sit up and look around all the
time but seem unfazed by us opening or closing the window, or walking
past it and chatting to each other. I noticed tonight that they're
stretching and fluttering their wings, so I imagine it won't be long
before they leave the nest. I am still just astonished that all this
was going on so close to our noses and until recently, we hadn't even
seen it! Now we know why that irritating pigeon spent so many mornings
outside our window, making a helluva racket.

Slightly surprising. We have had them nest in our clematis and
hydrangea petiolaris most years and the nest is almost silent. They
didn't seem to care about proximity to the front door at all.

Not so the large roost of starlings in our hedge at the moment which is
starting to make it smell a bit funny. They all panic and fly off to
the village hall roof every time anyone closes the door with a bang.
The hedge makes an interesting cacophony of starling noises when they
are in residence.

It was just starting to get light, so I'm assuming either mother was
about to fall out or they were! Or, of course, it was some predator,
which I don't like the idea of at all! At present the two babies are
still in the best but as you say, totally silent, except for the wing
flapping practice. They're so huge I can't imagine how they still fit
in there now!
--

I also didn't notice a blackbird's nest right near my kitchen window in
the buddliea until the day I noticed the female with some food in her
beak. The babies fledged that day.
Duh! and I call myself a birdwatcher..

Tina

I just wonder how long it is before they fly the nest. Every day we
wake up, expecting them to be gone, because they're so large their
living conditions must be very uncomfortable! But while there's a lot
of wing flapping and so forth going on, and one of them hopped out onto
a branch yesterday, they're still in the nest and this morning, mum was
feeding them! This must be the avian equivalent of teenagers emptying
the fridge and leaving wet towels all over the floor before they leave
home. I am *fascinated* that they sit there and watch us through the
window and appear entirely unworried or afraid. Do you know how long
it is before they fly? They appear to be fully fledged. I'll try to
get a photo of them but the overgrowth of the rose makes it very
difficult to make a clear photo of the birds which indicates their
distance from our window.
--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk