Wolfgang and Frances Link and their family have lived for many years at Cotmore, between Stokenham and Beeson, surrounded by a wonderful garden. When they moved there in 1974 the surrounding landscape was quite bare, with low hedges and few trees. They planted trees and shrubs to provide windbreaks and shelter for the vegetable and flower beds that they created. By 2001 this had developed into a leafy oasis in the open countryside, ideal for encouraging birds to make it their home.

Early in April 2001 Wolfgang saw a Mistle Thrush flying away every time he went to his garden shed. He found the thrush’s nest in a cypress tree, only a few feet from the shed door.

The shed contained many garden tools, canes, string and everything a gardener could need. There wasn’t a day that they did not need to visit it for something but he didn’t want to disturb the birds while they were nesting. Wolfgang telephoned his bee-keeping friend Bryan Ashby to ask him how long the birds would be before their brood had flown. Bryan was not sure and suggested he ‘phone me to check.

I was very excited. Having told Wolfgang that the Mistle Thrush and most garden birds spend about two weeks sitting on their eggs and another two weeks feeding their young, I asked if Bryan and I, with our friend Chris Pierce, might come and try to photograph the birds, so the Garden Odyssey began.

On 8th April 2001 we set out along the lane from Bryan’s home in Slapton; the hedgebanks were sprinkled with celandines and primroses. That first day we left the canvas of the hide in a bundle on the ground, to let the birds get used to it. Over the next two days Bryan and Chris assembled the hide a little at a time. We peeped into the nest and saw four nestlings, their pink skin covered only with soft, ginger down. On 11th April Bryan and Chris took their first photos, each spending about an hour in the hide. Only the female incubates the eggs but both parents share feeding the young. Their visits were about every twenty minutes. The adults arrived with beakfuls of worms and stuffed the wormy mess into each of the four gaping mouths. The worms were plentiful because the neighbouring field had just been cultivated.

We all took turns at sitting in the hide every day, watching the feathers grow, until on 16th they were fully feathered. To encourage the fledglings to leave the nest, the parents were visiting but not feeding their brood. When Bryan and I arrived at eight the following morning, Wolfgang greeted us with, “They have flown!” Later we found one squatting in the flower bed and another in the branches of the Monterey Pine.

Bryan and I were both retired by 2001 but Chris was still working, opening the Camera Shop in Kingsbridge at 9 each week-day morning. He made a routine of driving over to Cotmore most mornings at about 6 and looking for new nests. One morning he watched a Chiffchaff carrying nesting material and followed it to where it was building a nest in a clump of vegetation only a few inches off the ground. On 24th April Bryan and he started to introduce a hide near to the Chiffchaff’s nest.

By now the bluebells were in blossom, as were the beautiful early purple orchids growing by the roadside at Cotmore.

I feared Barbara and I were going to miss out on the excitement of seeing the Chiffchaff’s story unfold, because we were leaving for three weeks’ holiday in Croatia.

The others enjoyed watching the progress of the Chiffchaffs, including the first time they actually saw the open mouths of the chicks appearing at the entrance of the nest. The parents, who shared the feeding, visited every two or three minutes. They would hover in front of the domed nest like olive-green humming-birds.

Barbara and I returned from Croatia on 21st May. The next morning at eight o’clock, I went straight to Cotmore. I was so pleased that the young were still in the nest and I watched from the hide as the parents came to feed them. The next morning they were gone. One of the fledglings was balanced unsteadily on the branch of an apple tree.

That was just the start of our 2001, Garden Odyssey. The next instalment will continue next week.