Winged Distractions

These days my biggest distraction is watching the birds my back garden. When my sister gave me a decorative bird table/bowl last Christmas, I put it away thinking I'd put it to use at my next house. But a month or so ago, because this one has still failed to sell, hubby and I pulled it out and set it up in the garden. Now we try to keep it filled with leftover wholemeal bread and other things the birds fancy.

Hence all the distraction. I'm fascinated by the sparrows and blackbirds, and the starlings who have taken to bringing their young to be fed there as well. Just this morning I saw the first young sparrow hopping around and opening its beak wide whenever one of its parents came anywhere near. The sparrows are also the only birds light enough to hang from the netted nuts that are dangling underneath, although I have seen a starling hanging onto the metal post of the bird table and lunging with its beak each time the net swung close enough to it. Every so often hubby bashes some of the nuts out onto the top of our little wall so that the bigger birds can get some.

We've also attracted the attention of a pigeon who sits on the garage roof debating whether to fly down. I haven't seen him actually in the garden but hubby told me he had. we don't really want him because he'll probably scare off all the others, but there's not a lot we can do about it. My sister lives on the Dveon coast and she tells me she can't feed the birds at this time of the year because the seagulls are so aggressive when they are rearing their young. At least we don't have that problem at the moment.

Every morning our garden is alive with smallish birds. If they can't get onto the table they'll hop around the lawn searching for worms. Or they keep popping out from under the shrubs to see if it's their turn yet. It's all quite inspirational and I can feel a poem bubbling up and ready to erupt sometime soon.

I do keep trying to take photos but it's usually been too late before I have the camera pointing in the right direction. Today I just caught this little sparrow by leaning out of a bedroom window with the camera and then cropping the wider pic I got. One day perhaps I can show you more.