My Garden and Other Animals. Mike Dilger
and now partially collapsed holes that were probably indicative of breeding attempts from previous seasons. I made a mental note that I simply had to bring a four-pack back down here later in the year to spend an evening watching the kingfishers – if we were lucky enough to have them breed in the same bank again.
With many other gardens backing onto the brook, it also gave us the perfect opportunity for a nose around, or a kingfisher’s-eye view, of all of our waterside neighbours. As you would expect, the gardens were a mixed bunch, with some beautifully laid-out, whilst others were in a ramshackle state and obviously hadn’t been touched for years. Peering over the bank, we were amazed to see one large garden with a model railway running the whole way around its perimeter – how utterly bizarre!
With March rapidly approaching, the next urgent job on the ever-growing to-do list was to get some nest boxes in the garden, as the resident blue tits, great tits and robins would probably already have begun prospecting potential nest sites for the oncoming breeding season. If I were to collect house points for effort in attracting birds to our garden, then I would be awarded one point for every different species spotted actually feeding in the garden, but would be granted an immediate 10 house points for every pair which successfully raises a brood. For any self-respecting garden naturalist, playing host to nesting birds in your garden should really be the greatest accolade, as it says that you are getting much more right than wrong in your attempt to make your garden the ultimate wildlife-friendly destination.
In an ideal world, I would love to have handmade all my own nest boxes, as it is incredibly easy and instructions can be found on the internet. However, as time was of the essence, we decided that we would have to splash the cash. Anyone who has ever purchased a nest box knows that they come in innumerable shapes and sizes, so after much debate down at our local garden centre about the merits of each design, we went for four of the classic boxes as favoured by blue and great tits, three open nest boxes as preferred by robins and spotted flycatchers, and a large box fraternised by jackdaws or tawny owls. On reaching the tills with our trolley full to the brim, I was left with the distinct feeling that creating this haven of wildlife – if done properly – would not only need time and effort but possibly a large proportion of our expendable income too!
With the sun streaming through our bedroom window, it was obvious that the morning after our mercy dash to the garden centre would be beautifully cold and crisp – in fact the perfect day for putting up nest boxes. Having run out of milk for our ‘pre-erecting nest boxes coffee’, I offered to walk round to the local store to grab a couple of pints whilst Christina sorted out breakfast. Enjoying the warming effect of the low winter sun on my face, I must have gone no more than 50 yards from the house when I heard the unmistakable sound of a male chaffinch belting out his mating song – which in an instant signalled the immediate cessation of winter and beginning of spring.
My RSPB Handbook of British Birds describes the chaffinch’s song as ‘a short, fast and rather dry descending series of trills that accelerates and ends with a flourish’, which I suppose is a reasonable interpretation of an unremarkable song. But the description does nothing to explain the huge symbolism of what the song represents, as I always look upon it as signifying the gateway to my favourite season. The song operates like a drum-roll for spring to let us know that the bumblebees and butterflies are about to emerge, bud burst will begin and the breeding season can swing into action.
We had decided that the first place to erect one of the boxes would be on the oak trunk, which had just been liberated from its ivy stranglehold. Marking the northwest boundary of our property, the previous owners had erected a steel fence which butted up to the tree and then topped it off with a barbed-wire strand which had been crudely nailed straight into the oak’s trunk.
Keen to remove this impediment to the tree’s health before we put up the nest box, I attacked the fencing staples with my pliers, momentarily forgetting that I was right on the edge of the precipice created by the brook. As I reached round to remove the last staple, my foot slipped on the mud, causing me to lose my balance, and a split-second later I was careering off the edge bound for the water below – and to think, I’m ashamed to admit, that I had stifled a laugh when I heard about Mr Gregory’s unscheduled visit to the same brook a few years earlier! Also aware of the fact that my ridiculously expensive camera was still around my shoulder, I closed my eyes and prepared for a big splash, no small amount of pain on hitting the water and the instigation of a large insurance claim to replace my soon-to-be-ruined camera. Thump! I opened my eyes to find that I hadn’t hit the water at all, as I had straddled one of the huge oak roots protruding from the bank. Despite the fact that the tree had saved both me and my photography kit, I didn’t get away scot-free, as I had pulled a groin muscle, slightly bruised my err … undercarriage and cut a couple of fingers. Nevertheless, it was a lucky escape.
Elsewhere in the garden, Christina hadn’t been aware of my fall until she turned round on hearing my pathetic cries for help as I came out of my momentary daze and realised I was struggling to get either up or down. On peering over the edge of the bank Christina wasn’t sure whether to be worried for me or laugh her socks off at my ridiculous predicament. After passing the camera to her, which had fortunately not been damaged by my tumble, I was eventually able to scramble back up the bank, and recount what had happened, feeling somewhat embarrassed and chastened by the whole experience.
Deciding that because of my sore groin it would probably be easier if Christina put up the tree nest boxes, leaving her klutz of a boyfriend to hold the ladder and pass up the tools, we set about finishing the job. Starting with the tit boxes first, we elected to attach one each to the trunks of the oak and the birch whilst embedding the other two in the centre of the hazel stands. Two of the open nest boxes were nailed at differing heights to the playing field fence line whilst the other was placed on the dividing fence between our garden and Marjory and Dennis’s.
The only problem we encountered for the rest of the morning was in our attempt to put up the large nest box. We were struggling to find a place to put it where it would have a chance of being used, without endangering our lives in the process. After a half-hearted attempt to put the box some 15 feet up in the beech tree, using a combination of our ladder and then a bit of tree-climbing, we decided, after my experience a few hours earlier, that it was probably a touch too ambitious and dangerous, and so left the nest box in the garage for another breeding season. Because the nest box was of the open-fronted variety, I was also fearful that if anything did try to nest in there, the chicks would have been an easy target for those opportunistic squirrels.
We planned to spend some time in our postage-stamp-sized front garden in the afternoon, so I went in to prepare lunch, only for Christina to dash in minutes later urging me back out into the garden. As I looked down the garden you could have blown me over with a feather as we watched a prospecting blue tit stick its head back out of the nest box on the birch tree, scarcely more than an hour after we had put it up. Talk about an instant response!
Although it may seem glamorous from the outside, a career in television can in reality involve working long days, spending many nights living out of a suitcase and substantial periods away from home and loved ones. In my case, it also brought the new and totally unexpected feeling of missing the garden. In the space of just over a month, I had already spent more time in our new garden than the entire previous decade in my old Bristol garden. So as I arrived back at 1am on 3 March after a long trip away filming bats down caves, I felt like I was coming home in more ways than one, and experienced rising excitement at the thought of seeing both Christina and how the garden had changed over the last few days.
Pulling up outside the house,