A postage-sized blue planet spectacular
Birds have to queue and mind their social distance if they want a drink in my garden. The only water for a mile around during the hot summer weather has been in the old frying pans on my lawn. Six pairs of wood pigeons have their nests in the tall trees that surround the house in just an acre of land and all of them want a drink. Then they want to take water in their throats back to their young which were wilting in the sweltering heat of July and early August. They need to drink just as we do every few hours.
I took a picture of a wood pigeon which had settled itself in one of the frying pans and refused to budge. A young blackbird had to queue up and wait its turn. It became quite stroppy and once or twice ran at the ring dove which ignored these threats as it then decided to have a bath. It turned itself upside down, thrashed its wings to get every last drop into its plumage to reach all that itchy skin which the heat had tormented every day. After five minutes not a drop was left for the blackbird which then had to bathe in the wet grass all around what was now an empty swimming pool. Of course I soon filled it up and then three blackbirds came out for their turn. They decided to have a fight in the pool, being silly teenagers.
Meanwhile every other bird was queueing impatiently. I felt sympathy for them. No doubt you have had to queue patiently in the past months while keeping your social distance and you may, like me, have been slightly irritated as your face mask caused your spectacles to fog up, and gave you a slight feeling of discomfort in the air passages when they had had enough of hot air. Several times this feeling of frustration has been compounded by others in the queue who have gone into a sort of daydream and failed to move on into the next allotted space and I have had to remind them to move forward.
Well, all the birds I have watched over the last few months have had their patience tested to so we are not alone in the world. After the teenaged blackbirds had kicked and pecked each other with claws and beaks and emptied all the water once again it was the turn of the young robins with their speckled breasts and fiery tempers to squabble.
Meanwhile the hedge sparrows, or dunnocks as they are actually called, hopped patiently in the shadows waiting their turn, only to be mistaken by the hoodlum robins as yet more hoodlum robins.
When it was quiet again, a blackcap warbler appeared and quarrelled with the dunnocks. He is a fiery little grey bird with a black beret that reminds me of the one worn by Hercule Poirot when on a cat-burgling foray inside some criminal’s house.
Finally, when all these were satisfied the chiff-chaff warblers came flicking forward like moths, glad of only the barest few millimetres of water that was left, their tiny bodies barely visible above the rim of the frying pan.
Altogether, a postage-sized blue planet spectacular that has kept us entertained.