Weekly Whimsy: The Angry Bird and the Gardener (from the Hawkesbury Parish News July 2017)

My column for the July 2017 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News shares my husband’s latest gardening crisis

As he’s nearly severed a finger not once but twice while cutting wood, when my husband announces that he’s going to prune some of the trees in our garden and a chainsaw is mentioned, I decide my best course of action is to retreat to my study and hope for the best.

A little later, an anguished cry comes from downstairs.

“Help! It’s an emergency!”

I nearly have an accident myself running to his aid, wondering what injury he’s sustained this time.

Pale and anxious, he’s standing in the middle of the kitchen pointing at a small pile of sticks on the table. That’s not much to show for an hour’s pruning, I think, then I hear some faint cheeps, and realise it’s a nest full of open-beaked baby blackbirds.

He’s inadvertently pruned the limb supporting the nest and is unsure what to do about it. My maternal instinct kicks in on the mother bird’s behalf.

“Put the nest back in the same tree as close as you can to the original site, and she’ll follow the sound of her chicks to find them,” I advise him.

When he steels himself to check next day, all are alive and cheeping, so I’m guessing my plan worked. I bet the mother bird told her chicks off for moving the nest while she was out, though.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like to try this collection of five years of my columns in the Hawkesbury Parish News, with, as bonus material, a previously unpublished set of essays about country life that I wrote when I first move to the village over twenty-five years ago. 

“Totally charming… makes you want to pack up and move there right away”
(5* review on Amazon UK) 

”