Blackbird Singing at the Dead of Night

Monday, 21st March 2005
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary

Since they connected up the new street-lamp, dawn chorus has been a whole lot earlier, with a blackbird singing at 2 in the morning. The new lamps are considerably brighter, and taller, than the old.

There's plenty of blackbird food around: I put in another three of my half-hour digging sessions on the wild flower meadow area and find that the rich black earth is well populated by earthworms.

As I dig near the log pile a millipede snakes away, like a dragon at the Chinese new year celebrations.

As I'm digging near the hedge I rescue some small lesser celandine plants. They'll be welcome in the wild flower meadow.

My final job with the meadow is to clear a large patch of snowdrops. With the leaves still showing this is a good time to move them, but snowdrops thrive in our garden anyway: I've put bulbs to one side in a plant pot and forgotten about them and in spring they've sprouted and flowered, despite having very little in the way of soil in which to grow.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk