Don’t forget the birds when rain comes

Country Notebook

WHAT a difference a day makes. On Monday and Tuesday, it felt like spring had truly sprung. The first real splash of colour (and warmth) after a grey and miserable winter.

But it appears that Mother Nature had lulled me into a false sense of security. As, when I woke Wednesday, the first sound I heard was the pitter patter of raindrops on the window pane, swiftly followed by the howl of the wind rushing over the roof of the house. Here we go again!

I don’t know about you, but it’s a soundtrack that just makes me want to pull the covers up and stay in bed. However, it’s not long before my ‘always feel like I have to be doing something’ state of mind gets the better of me and I’m up and about.

Not to be defeated by the wrath of Her Ladyship, I still made sure to take my morning walk around the fields and wake the ol’ brain up for the day ahead. As you can probably guess, on a wet and windy day, the snoozing fox I stumbled upon on Monday was nowhere to be seen. Tucked away in a warm and cosy den, if he’s got any sense. The only other living soul I came across was a rather resplendent, albeit slightly rain-soaked, cock pheasant, who with all that water on his wings was even less inclined to take flight in his haste to find cover.

I must have only been out for 15 or 20 minutes, but the wetness of my coat would have anyone thinking that I had jumped in a pool. About to retreat indoors, I was instead drawn to the hive of activity around our bird feeders, which as regular readers of the Country Notebook will know I have been seeing in a whole new light since lockdown and full-time home working began in March 2020.

One of Dad’s birthday presents this year was a rather trendy-looking mealworm and suet pellet feeder (shopping opportunities in January were very limited due to lockdown!). This has gone down a treat with the local diners – once they figured out how to use it, that is.

But the reason I was stopped in my tracks from going to get dry was all because of one little blue tit with a first-class honours in the art of guilttripping. I stood there and watched as this soggy little pom-pom ball of feathers flitted from branch to branch, carrying out his own risk assessment before finally landing on the feeder – only to find it empty of any tasty morsels. I’m sure that look on his face was one of pure and unadulterated disappointment. How could I just walk away?

So back out into the elements I went, a bag of suet pellets in hand, to put a stop to this sorry situation. Before I had even fully walked away, the blue tit was back and feasting. That’s my good deed for the day.