2001: The Garden Odyssey continues

When I was with you last, in flaming June, it was remembering the Spring of 2001 in that wonderful garden at Cotmore. The Greenfinches had just fledged their ill-behaved family of four.

Bryan Ashby and Chris Pierce, who for many years had shared running the photographic shop in Kingsbridge, were in Heaven sharing the pleasure of photographing a series of birds at their nests. It had begun with the Mistle Thrushes, followed by Chiffchaffs, Robins and the challenging Greenfinches.

The garden seemed so full of birds, from Sparrows and Wrens to Sparrowhawks and Tawny Owls, that Chris decided to start feeding them to increase the photo opportunities. He found an old tree trunk with hollows and knobbles and filled some of the hollows with bird-seed. He set a hide against the hedge near the log and would creep into it early in the morning before work. Bryan and I usually came to see what was visiting a bit later. We were all delighted when the Greenfinch family started coming to our bird-cafe. We had House Sparrows, Chaffinches, Blackbirds, Wood Pigeons and even a fine cock Pheasant.

Wolfgang thought there was a Dunnock nesting somewhere in the hedge behind the house. We found the nest, with its beautiful sky-blue eggs. On 2nd June we began slowly to move the hide towards the nest. The Dunnocks had chosen to build in a blackthorn bush. The colours of the thorny branches and the colours of the Dunnocks’ plumage matched perfectly. The tiny chicks hatched on the 4th and in less than two weeks they had successfully fledged.

We were finding so many nests we decided to make a map to show how rich a site it was. We marked where we found nests and put a black square to show where we had positioned the hides. What would we find next?