Day 207 - Troublemaker

lookout point

This little lady has been the cause of much trouble around here...in fact, such is her significance, I think she's featured on my blog before!

The Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) makes it a criminal offence to disturb a nesting bird. 

This protection stands regardless of whether the bird is nest building, or the nest contains eggs or young dependent fledglings.

In one of the hedges between our cottage and next door, a pair of blackbirds have been nesting for some weeks...for the last two or three weeks, they have been diligently feeding their young on juicy fat worms and other insects that they find around the garden. 

Our garden makes for a wonderful food rich territory for them, and we believe this is their second brood this year. 

One drawback, however, is the Killer Queen, Loz.  At the weekend, as Queenie was hunting voles around the decking, something in the hedge caught her attention. 

The blackbird nest is low in the hedge, maybe only 1m above the ground, although the hedge is so dense that the nest is not easily visible - I haven't managed to spot it yet. 

Anyway I found Loz totally focussed on the hedge in the approximate vicinity of the nest, in full on targeting mode.

As I shooed her away, she hardly even noticed me, instead treating me like some kind of roadblock and merely adjusting her position without losing focus on the nest at all.

We had to shut her indoors (much to her chagrin) for 48 hours, before she seemed to forget about the nest when let out under our supervision. 

The blackbird has a variety of strategies for defending itself against predators such as Loz, of which the Prime Directive is:

Never let the predator discover the location of the nest.

The blackbird achieves this by only entering the nest when they're sure they are unobserved...if a cat is around they will sit on the lawn in full view, just a few feet away, and wait for the cat to pay them some attention...at which point they'll take off directly away from the nest.   This both draws the predator away (both physically and psychologically), and as a side bonus, offers their mate a chance, quietly and unnoticed, to enter the nest.

To some extent they are testing the predator, to see whether it is in hunting mode, such that they can adjust their tactics appropriately.

For pure prey animals, they are remarkably brave where their young are concerned.

Anyway, as I briefly mentioned in an earlier post, we had to interrupt the drain digging operation in our garden because the new underground pipes were to be routed directly below the nest.

For several days now works have been halted (although in fairness, the nest is not the only reason), and we are watching and waiting to see what develops with the nest. 

I should note that we're not keen to protect the bird because it's illegal, but simply because it's morally right - the Law is simply a convenient way of forcing the uncompromising and uncaring drainage workers to cede to our personal standpoint. ;-)

A couple of days ago, our neighbour claimed that the young had fledged...but since then we've seen the mother and father blackbirds go back to the nest, and they're still making the soft clucking sound they make to reassure their young...so they don't seem to have fledged just yet.

Somewhat worryingly, this morning I saw the mother blackbird in the photo above enter the nest with a beak full of dry grass...nesting material!

We're hoping this simply means they're making a few running repairs...and not that they're starting Round Three!

I'll keep both my eye on them, and you posted...

:-)