What do you think about this weather? Here we are the spring bank holiday weekend and, apart from a few miserable drops, we haven’t seen any rain for weeks. My Father, who’s in his 91st year, has consistently, (on the basis that he’s seen all this changing weather before in his lifetime), pooh-poohed the idea of global warming but he’s had to admit that he can’t remember an April like the one just gone!
Blackensford brook is beginning to look like it did in the height of the summer, last year; I walked along it just a few days ago and the little river is reduced to isolated pools which are linked by babbling shallows that can easily be forded without the aid of Wellington boots. Out on the Forest some of the wetland areas seem to be suffering too from the lack of precipitation and it’s possible, at the moment, to walk across considerable tracts of bog that would normally be quite impassable at this time of the year.
It may be a time to consider the old proverb:
Oak before Ash, in for a splash
Ash before oak, in for a soak
Which is meant to say that if the oak buds open before the ash then we will be in for a dry summer, but if the ash buds open before the oak then we’ll be in for a wet summer? Well let me tell you now, that up here in the Inclosure, the oak was in leaf long before any ash! So look out!
The unseasonably warm weather has not deterred the birds from doing what they normally do at this time of the year and I’m sharing my house, as usual, with several other families. Mum and Dad robin have chosen my back porch as a suitable location to rear their young which has meant that to avoid disturbing them, all traffic, into and out of the house, has been through the front kitchen door. Above my study window, in the pyrocanthus, is the nest of a pair of pied wagtails and immediately adjacent to it, their cousins, the grey wagtails, have also elected to build. In fact their nests are so close that they must disturb each others youngsters, every time they return with food.
Last week a pair of swallows appeared and without hesitation began to inspect the interior of Isaacs stable. I was delighted to see them of course and I hope they’re the same pair, or offspring from the same pair, who tried so stoically, last year, to be the first ever of their species to nest on this site. Quite frankly, I hadn’t expected to see any swallows this year and was amused when recently an enterprising wren decided to cap-off the swallows nest with a smart, moss lid and thus transformed it into a potential home where his mate might lay her eggs. The male wren builds several nests each spring and then invites his missus to select the one that takes her fancy and because I hadn’t seen any wren activity around the stable I’d assumed that this particular nest had not been to her liking. I decided to encourage the swallows to stay by removing, without delay, this unexpected extension to their home. You can imagine my surprise when, as I mounted the step ladder, an angry little ball of brown feathers flew out of the entrance hole and sat bobbing noisily on the top of the stable wall. Needless to say I left her alone – and the rightful owners?
They’ll just have to swallow their pride and build again.
Ian Thew
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