Write Every Day: Day 7

[regshoe]

Check-in post for 7 May. Please say what day you're checking in for, to avoid confusion about timezones, and let me know if I've missed you in a tally.

It's getting into baby bird season here, and this morning I had a wonderful sighting—a coot (Fulica atra) sitting on its nest, with a little gaggle of adorable scruffy chick heads poking out from beneath the parent bird :D (What coot chicks look like, for reference).


Tally for the month so far:

Day 7: china_shop, regshoe, zero_pixel_count

Day 6: amedia, badly_knitted, cefyr, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, kate, lferion, ljm, luzula, muccamukk, phantomtomato, philomytha, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, vendettadays, yasaman, ysilme, zero_pixel_count

Day 5: amedia, badly_knitted, carenejeans, cefyr, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, kate, lferion, luzula, muccamukk, phantomtomato, philomytha, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme, zero_pixel_count

Day 4: amedia, badly_knitted, black_bentley, carenejeans, cefyr, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, kate, lferion, ljm, luzula, muccamukk, phantomtomato, philomytha, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, stonepicnicking_okapi, sylvanwitch, trobadora, vendettadays, yasaman, ysilme, zero_pixel_count

Day 3: amedia, badly_knitted, black_bentley, carenejeans, cefyr, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, kate, lferion, ljm, luzula, muccamukk, phantomtomato, philomytha, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, stonepicnicking_okapi, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, vendettadays, yasaman, ysilme, zero_pixel_count

Day 2: amedia, badly_knitted, black_bentley, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, kate, lferion, ljm, luzula, muccamukk, phantomtomato, philomytha, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, stonepicnicking_okapi, sylvanwitch, trobadora, vendettadays, yasaman, ysilme, zero_pixel_count

Day 1: amedia, badly_knitted, black_bentley, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, kate, lferion, ljm, luzula, muccamukk, phantomtomato, philomytha, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, vendettadays, yasaman, ysilme, zero_pixel_count


My check-in for day 7: After a dispiriting afternoon (housemate doing DIY; destruction to all power tools), I've managed to revive enough to write 550 words.

Comments

[regshoe]

Oh dear, I know of the perils of letting cats too near baby birds (I rescued a fledgeling blue tit from one of my housemate's cats a couple of years ago—the bird was fine in the end, but it was a dramatic adventure). I hope the baby birds in the ivy are safely hidden and getting on well, in that case :)

[ysilme]

Yay for rescuing that baby bird, and for it being successful! ♥ We never get to see any baby birds nor are the cats interested in that corner of the garden - the ivy trees are outside the fence but close enough to incite their interest - so I expect them to be save, at least from our cats. But as the trees are also on a small and very steep strip of land between our garden and the district road, foreign cats pass only very rarely due to the area being the territory of our cats; back before Findis also became a full-time "garden" cat she, her brothers and another cat of ours patrouilled that area and the old boundaries are still respeted, it seems. (They also never brought any baby birds, and nearly never a bird in the first place, perhaps once per year, and as they were faithfully bringing everything at least to the terracce we had a good idea what they were hunting). But we also always make sure to leave a lot of thick underbrush the cats can't go in so any bird on the ground can hide safely. Actually, the magpies are much more of a problem here for songbirds, particularly the blackbirds who do nest in the large cypress in front of our house (I totally forgot about that; we only know as once a fledgeling was on our roof and then in the gutter, and we could only get it safely down to the ground, not up again, but built a "safety brush heap" for it and kept the cats inside the garden (the cypress is outside the pen) after reading up on what to do. But we don't know if it was saved or one of the neighbour's cats might have got it. We had magpies nesting just one plot over in one year, and not only did they wreak total havoc with our feeding stations and dispelled all other birds, but we also had much less birds in the year afterwards. Friends from the local Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union who know our situation said it's likely the magpies not only dispersed the other birds but did likely also rob many nests.
At least the magpies didn't nest again close by, and we're back to our usual amoung of birds.

[regshoe]

That sounds like good security from cats! Aww, and good for you helping that poor fledgeling blackbird. And at least the magpies are natural predators, but it does sound like it's nicer for the songbirds without them around. I've been out for a walk this evening and saw several families of (greylag and Canada goose) goslings along the river, which is always a nice sight.