Babies

I have written a lot about how the blackbirds have been upset about the cat and the magpies. Well, I think their home proved too unsafe and they moved at least one baby away. I realised that one of the male blackbirds had been feeding a baby in the honeysuckle. There is no nest: just one lonely baby. I could hear it speaking when the father was near and they spoke to each other when he jumped into the labyrinthine vines.

Then, something caused the baby to come out of the bush...

Fortunately, it was able to go back in - and the father was still dutifully feeding it two days later.

I feel incredibly protective.

That honeysuckle, which twines through a holly tree, provides a very safe place and today I saw a baby robin fly in and I think a baby dunnock too. It's a bird kindergarten.

In one of Jonathan Franzen's books, I think it's Freedom, the man begins trapping and killing cats. I thought it was awful when I first read the book, but I have some sympathy with that position now! Not that I would kill a cat. But, the poor birds. It seems so unfair that their lives are made so incredibly hard and risky.