What to watch

-




 

I cannot watch the news these days. I switch on for the headlines but the extended news programmes full of disaster are too much for me. I do not watch because I cannot do anything about it. Can anyone look I wonder? It may be a coward’s way out, but my spirits drop as I stare in bewilderment.

One thing I am watching though, which lifts the spirits, is the robin nesting in my box outside my kitchen window, I could peer for hours as a flash of red shows the female bringing leaves and fine grass (and yesterday a white feather) to her nest. The male robin is on guard in the hedge or on the fence post and occasionally feeds her a tasty grub.

She is not making a good job of nest building, there are leaves left dangling and strands of grass coming out of the hole. I am tempted to think that I could assist. Maybe if I walked past and tucked and tidied it would help. This is nonsense of course the robins know what they are doing. The magpie is cackling nearby, and I do not want to make the mistake I once made and inadvertently showed the predators where the robin nest was by visiting to look inside. All the young were lost.

Another flash of red we saw this week was from a neighbour’s chimney. Huge plumes of smoke rolled across our west window and almost blacked out the setting sun. Then there were the sparks shooting up before it all died down. I rang our neighbours who were in another room and blissfully unaware of what we could see. They soon had everything under control, but it got me thinking about our phones.

I rang on their landline. We hardly ever use our landline. It is so much easier to use the mobile and it is just as well because the landlines will be obsolete in three years’ time, and we will have to use the internet instead. The trouble is some of my dearest friends who are older than me can only use the landline.

And of course, the other frequent users are the scammers, always taking me by surprise and seeming so genuine. Recently, one was about my electricity supply, and one was about a gift voucher I had just bought on-line. I believed both, but they were trying to get my personal details and make money out of me.

Today life is changing so fast it is often terrifying and our world is hardly recognisable from one week to the next. But the robin is tidying her nest ready for her eggs.

(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)



The nest box outside my kitchen window


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home from hospital (again)

-
Image
Bang, crash flash. It was not a thunderstorm but noises in my head as I gradually came back to consciousness. My operation was over and I slowly checked my senses I could hear the theatre nurse on my right, I could smell the disinfectant air, I could feel my fingers and I could see. But could I read? I remember when my mother had a brain operation (mine was not this) they asked her as she came round from anaesthetic, ‘Who is the Prime minister?’.  She knew it was Harold Wilson – not too difficult as he had quite a long stint in the job. But if they asked me the same question, I think that I could have been forgiven for not knowing because we have had so many different ones recently. In any case, my brain seemed to be working as I squinted to read a notice on the wall it said, ‘Quiet Please’, and of course all I wanted to do was to shout out in joy that it was all over. When I was waiting the long weeks before my operation, I read a poster telling me how to prepare. Lose weight (I a
Read more

The dangers of living in the country

-
I know that you might think that living in the country we do not get to see people very much. And it is true that I cannot walk out of my door and have a natter with a next door neighbour and I can’t just pop in to a cafe and catch up with friends who happen to be there. But you would be surprised how often I do meet up with friends – it’s just that you have to make more of an effort and it all has to be arranged and planned and when we do meet – we never stop taking – you see there is so much to say after only having our pets for company. Well, anyway, I am trying to tell you about what happened last night. Now the nights are drawing in we all agreed to meet up for an evening meal in our nearest town to cheer ourselves up. I offered to pick up a friend in a nearby village and drive to the nearest town miles away. What a good time we had catching up on news and ... well, just talking to a person and not a cat or bees or the like. But at the end of the evening I was dismayed to find tha
Read more

Baby sparrows fall

-
Image
We have ‘July drop’. This is not a disease, thank goodness, but something perfectly harmless that happens to apples each year. Little apples, which have not developed fully, fall to the ground. It is nature’s way of thinning the fruit naturally. Ours have been dropping for some weeks now, but this year we had frosts late in the spring and so the fruit is not too plentiful. I am hoping the drop stops soon. We are relying on our apples especially at this time when we are trying to be self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit. Two baby sparrows had July drop here too. They fell from their nest, somehow, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was a bird of prey that they were trying to escape from or the wind that broke up their flimsy nest structure. In any case, I heard their parents chirping from the trees and the nestlings soon toddled off into the nearby long grass. The ‘common’ house sparrow is not now so common, in fact it is on the RSPB red list which means that there is cause for concer
Read more