Remaining chill leaves birds glad of a snug nest

I KNOW it is nesting season when the birds suddenly gather closer to my house. From the study where I’m writing, sparrows chirp noisily from the hawthorn outside.

The tree is nicknamed the “May Tree” for its once reliable flowering during the early part of the month.

But it is only mid-April and already fit to burst.

The birds seem similarly in a hurry. Out back, a pair of dunnocks are well ensconced in a honeysuckle covering our outdoor toilet. I watch them flying to and fro as they gather nesting materials, taking the same darting diversions to shake off predators.

Some old bits of wool I left out in the garden have quickly been commandeered. Magpies have been digging mosses out of our lawn while a pair of goldcrests gather it from the same spot on a brick garden wall every year without fail. They are back again.

A fellow writer Nicola Chester keeps a New Forest pony who sheds his winter coat every spring. She estimates that generations of birds will have raised their young in his discarded chestnut fur.

My favourite ever act of avian appropriation comes a little further afield. Once in Orkney, I was shown a raven nest where in the absence of trees, the birds had instead gathered tangles of barbed wire that they had lined with pilfered sheep wool.

Any hatching birds will need such accoutrements this weekend. The weather stays on the chilly side, with a patch of frost likely this morning in even sheltered parts of the country.

Generally speaking, things do seem drier, though, with even periods of sunshine bursting through gaps in the cloud.

Nice, perhaps, for the newly fledged denizens of the British Isles to realise that it doesn’t rain here all the time. Just most of it.*

Cherry blossom on the Stray in Harrogate