A silent warning
I am
still looking up into the sky. My hope is to see swallows or house martins, but
I have not seen anything. There has been warm blue sky and plenty of little
flying insects but no birds flying high to catch them. Also, we normally have
swifts screaming around the house at this time, but the skies are silent.
I
remember reading the book called The Silent Spring by Rachel Carson which she
wrote in 1962. In those carefree heady days her warnings of the birds not
singing in the spring seemed improbable. She wrote about the part humans play
in the care of the environment. I think now that we should have listened to her
warnings sooner. There have been big changes in our wildlife.
Another
change, not on an environmental one, but a big switch non-the-less, is to the
landlines. Our landline phone has broken. It rings but when one of us picks it
up it keeps on ringing. So, we have decided to do without it. In any case they
are due to be replaced by digital calls using the internet in the next few
years. But it is quite a difficult task to make sure that everyone knows our
mobile number. We still have some time to go on our old contract so we can
always go back if we want.
Getting
the birds back will not be so easy. I can remember only a few years ago when
the swallows raced ahead of me on my bike swooping down the lane catching flies.
There are lots of farms near us and the swallows nested in the plentiful open
sheds. Where are they now? They are not here.
Something
that is here though is the solitary bee – or rather bees as there are quite a
few of them. Some years ago, Mr T bought me a ‘house’ for solitary bees, we put
it up in the orchard. It is about the size of half a shoe box with sixteen
little entrance holes for the bees. But they did not use it, perhaps because it
was in the shade. Then we moved it to the sunny cowshed wall and here they are
each with its own little compartment. I sit and watch as the female comes to
lay her eggs and leave pollen and nectar for when they hatch next year. I watch
her as she seals the entrance. So far six of the ‘apartments ‘are taken.
More
very good news from this morning is that through our bedroom window I see that two
house martins have turned up and are nest-building under the eaves of the house
over the road.
(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)
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