Fly or fall...

It’s that time of year. The eggs have hatched, the fledglings fledged, and the chicks, now teenagers, want to see the world - and anyway their parents are getting really fed up with feeding them. Sometimes enough really is enough.

The family of blue tits in our bird box are no exception and were out and about last weekend. Three chicks in all, fluffy and dull and just able to fly from branch to hedge and back again. One, the smallest, still not able to feed itself was tended by an ever busy parent moving to and from the feeder and back again, scraps of suet in its beak.

Birds seem to be such good parents, but it’s all just instinct and survival. There’s no love or affection, and as soon as the young ones are able the parents leave and the youngsters are left to fly or fall.

It wasn’t just young birds in the garden last weekend. The goldfinches are regulars now and for the first time a couple of siskins have appeared, feeding alongside the finches from the thistle seed feeder. At first I wasn’t sure what they were, having never seen one before, but my trusty pocket book of birds soon put me right and I was able to identify them. Such a thrill when a new bird appears for identification alongside the chaffinches, thrushes, robins, blackbirds, doves, great and blue and coal tits, dunnocks, sparrows and the occasional tree creeper.

I could watch them all day, even the greedy rooks that sweep down to take the bread we throw upon the hedge, scaring all the smaller birds away with their size and aggression.

So there you go. The young birds are on their own, I wish them a fair wind and that they fly rather than fall.