The Wilder End

Sunday, 20th July 2003, West Yorkshire

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hogweed and nettle In the overgrown corner by the raised bed - which I leave as shelter for frogs and other visitors to the pond - the hogweed has produced its umbels of disc-shaped seeds. Nettles have feathery tassles of creamy flowers.

Behind them the crab apple, a golden hornet, has plenty of green fruits which are only the size of cherries. They won't get much bigger as they ripen to golden yellow in the autumn.

blackbird fledglings

We're sorry to find a juvenile blackbird, brown and flecked with fine speckles, which has killed itself by flying into the lounge window. There's a high mortality rate amongst fledglings and with so many hazards around it sometimes seems surprising that a viable population continues to survive.

There are no immediate prospects that wood pigeons won't continue to survive both in the local countryside and in the leafier parts of town. There appears to be a nest in the top of my mum's leylandii cypress. One of the resident pair of pigeons patrols the lawn, meets up with it's mate with a clattering of wings at the top of the conifer (all I could see was a tail, right, sticking out near the top) then flies off to perch on a chimney pot with a commanding view of the surrounding gardens.

There's a gentle background coo-ing from a rival wood pigeon in another garden:

'wuh - whu - woup
wuh - whu - woup
wuh - whu - woup'

richard@willowisland.co.uk