Blackbird singing....

A departure from craft posts, but for the last 3 days my caged minutes have been taken up with little critters. We have blackbirds nest twice a year in our honeysuckle, and this time the chicks decided to leave the nest early. Barely able to stand let alone fly, they landed on our patio on Saturday morning, and we have been looking after them ever since.

The parents are still feeding them, but this is a big cat community (no, not big-cat!) - so we are on constant look out. We have put out water, and fruit, and the parent birds (mostly the male) are doing a great job of clearing our garden of insects in their quest to feed the hungry birds. My just planted out stocks have taken a battering, though. They were grown in, and planted out in peat pots, and the adult birds have managed to root out two whilst searching for worms. Each night, after the parents have gone to roost, we herd them to safety behind a big plant pot, and block each side so cats cannot get them, then one of us is up at 4:30 to make sure they can get out before the parents are back to feed them.

They are beautifully ungainly, with big wide mouths, and curious eyes. They hop all over our patio and are getting more adventurous each day. We have 12 steps up from out patio to our main garden - this morning one was half way up the steps. Soon they will be ready to fledge for real - their tail feathers are just starting to grow. I think I will miss them.

Tonight as I type I can hear their chirps and cheeps. A lovely backdrop to the end of a lovely day. Another excuse for a small piece of verse, this time from Joseph Addison: "I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs."

I was also caught by this one by Wallace Stevens (13 ways of looking at a blackbird): "I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after."