A bird in the hand...

It’s a little late for bird’s eggs, so I was pretty surprised to find this nest in the bamboo at the bottom of the garden at the weekend. It was very well hidden and I only spotted it because a small brown lizard ran up one of the bamboo stems so I went looking for him in the long, green, foliage. He'd disappeared by the time I came across this nest though.

We get the occasional Viviparous lizard in the garden in Wales, particularly when it’s hot and it was very hot this weekend. It always comes as a surprise when I see one, it’s exciting. Not as exciting as the time an Adder waved her way across the path and into the long grass down by the stone fountain though. Am I sure it was an Adder? Oh yes, that diamond pattern along the snake’s back is very hard to mistake. And I’m equally sure that it wasn’t a grass snake, grass snakes have small separated diamonds and yellow makings on the top of their heads – and there were no yellow markings on that beauty, definitely an Adder.

I saw a nest of adders up at Geronwy’s farm last summer, tiny foot long snakes wriggling all around the yard. Obviously he had to kill them. They were a danger to his livestock – not a pleasant job though, chopping off their heads with the blade of a spade.

Anyway, back to the nest and the eggs. Quite a comfortable looking nest - well constructed, cosy looking - I think that the feathers are chicken, they certainly look like chicken feathers but they might be duck. I expect that they come from up the farm, probably from Holly’s hens or maybe even from one of her three Aylesbury ducks that are growing at an incredible rate. Hard to believe that these are the same ducks that I held in my hand back on June 1st when I posted ‘Rubbery Duck’. How can they have grown to such a size in only four weeks?

I’m pretty good with eggs, I used to collect them when I was a boy (I know, I know, but it was different back then), even so, I wasn’t quite sure which type of bird these four belonged to. The mother was nowhere to be seen, probably off finding food, but even so I didn’t want to get too close to the nest – birds don’t like that – so I had to use maximum zoom to get a closer look at them. Bit blurry, but I could see that the eggs were a light pinky, beige with dark brown speckles.

Not a blackbird then, Blackbird eggs are light blue with dark red spots, nor a thrush, pale blue speckled black, and besides they were too small for either of these. These eggs were a little smaller than a grape and slightly larger than a broad bean. A blue tit? No, white with reddish speckles. Some other type of tit? White again with red or purple specs and spots? Perhaps some sort of finch?

It was no use I needed to consult my book.

I went up to the cottage to fetch it.

When I returned five minutes later after retrieving my ‘Observer Book of British Eggs’, from the bottom of a draw in the old pine sideboard in the living room, the mystery was solved. No need for the book either, the mother had returned to the nest.

Just look who it was. Looks like Dubby is about to become a family man. Doesn’t Dilly look proud.

Rubber duck eggs. Well I never!