My garden has been neglected in the last few years while my attention has been needed elsewhere. Being tempted out by mild weather in late March I walked around the garden wishing I had time to pull up the weeds and cut back overgrown shrubs. As I got close to a conifer that was losing its cut spiral shape a song thrush exploded noisily out of the little tree and swooped away. It left behind a nest made of dried stems and sheep's wool with six blue speckled eggs inside.

I moved away quickly and avoided disturbing the thrush again.

      Happily I could look straight down onto the nest from an upstairs window and in a day or two could see the gaping mouths of the throstlings as one of the parents fed them. Male and female thrushes look very similar and share the parenting role. Today about one month since I first saw the nest I noticed it was empty, the little birds had flown. But seeing one or other of the parent thrushes constantly either searching for food or flying with a beak full I suspect their young are not very far away.

Sylvia Jones

April 23rd 2008