Spring is such a great time of year, my favourite season. Light mornings, spring flowers, tweeting birds springing lambs (hmmmm) and the promise of summer.
In the front of my home I have a Leylandi hedge, wouldn't have been my first choice, but living in a grade 2 listed building has some disadvantages. You can't put a hanging basket up or change a plug without asking permission from the local authority listings department.
My apartment is a converted Ballroom in a Georgian Manor house. That in iself is unusual, but the fact that it used to be a lunatic asylum prior to being converted raises the interest stakes. Each Sunday morning, at least half a dozen cars stop outside and disgourged their pasengers. These are usually of ex asylum workers, ex asylum inmates or people genuinly interested in the conversion of the Ballroom.
It was a bit of fun at start, but over the months this does start to get a bit of a pisser having people peer through your bay window. I did have people knock on the door and ask if they could look around.
I contacted the listings people at the council to ask if I could put a fence up and, as expected, the answer was a big NO.
Over the years, I had got to know the council chap at the listings department, indeed, he had always been most helpful. While declining permission to put up a fence, he did empathise with my problem and suggested a hedge.
The point of this posting is that in spring the hedge comes into it's own, after a winter of relative inactivity, it springs to life, growing at least a foot. In addition it also attracts wildlife.
Each of the last five years I have hosted a family of blackbirds. They slowly construct their new home in late April and mid May they deposit a clutch of eggs and wait. We have had a couple of cot deaths over the years but nothing to compare 2010.
On my return from Ireland at the end of April there was the ususal 'Spring like' activity in the animal kingdom and I knew there was also the usual interest in the hedge. I only usually get one nest and the hedge is somewhere near 30 metres long. What sort of idiot bird would build its nest 3 foot from the ground and right opposite a slate obelisk that also doubles as a cats scratching pole.
Guess what, this years tenant is a rather dim Blackbird, lovely singing voice but not a great deal between the ears ( do birds have ears ?)
Over the proceeding weeks while tidying up the garden I occasioned to pike into the hedge and observed Monk - I like to give things names and as this female always appeared to have the 'monk' on I decided to name her 'Monk'
Monk was either sitting there or she was out doing what Blackbirds do, there were five powder blue speckled ( uncannily like the Cadbury's mini eggs ) laid in the nest.
At the end of May the eggs hatched and five little baby blackbirds came into the world. Apart from my occasional pike into the nest to see that all was OK I had deliberately kept away from that part of the garden also avoiding cutting the hedge (much to the dismay of Liz next door who gives her hedge a short back and sides every other week.)
I didn't want the noise to scare the birds as they were getting to grips with life and building themselves up to fly the nest and become next years spring dawn chorus.
No such luck. Arriving back from visiting friends after the spring back holiday I was faced wih what can only be described and a massacre. Around the nest on the blue slate chippings were the body parts of the five young blackbirds torn to pieces. Very little eaten, just tortured and torn to pieces and left for the flies.
I have no evidence but I'm pretty sure I know exactly who the culprit is. But what do you do?
Punish him? Five murders in coldblood and you didn't even eat them. Is killing something lower down the foodchain acceptable? I don't think so !
I know you did it Charlie. God will be your judge, but if you come around here you'll feel the back of my hand you nasty twat.
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