Getting better

I'm being watched. As I come and go to the backdoor and even when I'm in the kitchen I'm under constant observation - by a male sparrow in the hedge.

Photo: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

A pair of house sparrows are nesting in the eaves over our bathroom window and the kitchen is on the floor below. It means that when you're in the kitchen they're coming and going throughout the day.

The female keeps busy ferrying invertebrates to the nestlings, I watched yesterday as she 'tenderised' a beetle on the concrete of the drive before taking it to the nest. The male's role seems mostly to be watchman; it sits in the hedge chirping away and keeping an eye on us, the dog and cats.

Good to know that nationally the house sparrow's population seems to have stabilised after years in decline. Apparently sparrow numbers are now at a six-year high.

Nest dilemma

We're having a good nest year this year. The wrens produced a brood in the garage and there are now swallows in there too. Great tits have come and gone from the nest box on the old apple tree and, to my great surprise the sparrow 'terrace' box has finally been used.

I've had it for three years now and have tried it in different places around the garden, but it has never attracted much interest. But it's now on the back of the big shed and has sparrows in residence - if you stand close by you can hear the nestlings.

There is one nest that's not quite so welcome. With all this rain I haven't been in and out of the little shed as much as I would usually, which is probably why I didn't notice the wasp nest until today.

It's on the back of the door and is a little bigger than a golf ball. While I was taking these pictures I didn't see any sign of the queen coming and going, which seems strange.

Shouldn't she be feeding the growing grubs? Below the nest hole there are lots of black droppings, so I'm assuming the grubs are alive and growing.

So is this an abandoned starter nest? Perhaps the queen has died during all that rain. And should I destroy the nest before it becomes a problem?

I think it might be the sensible thing to do. If the colony did grow and thrive the shed would have to be off limits for the rest of the summer - at least for the children.

But I can't quite bring myself to do it. I'm interested to see what happens next.

Daisy days

After a lot of running around to meetings and things over the last week or so it has been great to spend a little time being in the garden. Not doing much, just being.

We have had a lot of rain over the last few days, but nothing that unusual. So it's been strange to hear about what's been happening just an hour up the road in Aberystwyth. On Saturday we were enjoying the sun in the garden while the rain was still falling on flooded holiday parks in and around Aber.

Anyway, the recent rainfall seems to have accelerated growth. Grass in our meadow area that was ankle height a week ago is waist height now, or so it seems.

Along the hedge there's now tall nettles too. But the most eye-catching change is that the ox-eye daisies are now in bloom; there's something charmingly simple about them, like a child's drawing of a flower.

Going nuts

I can remember singing the 'Nuts in May' rhyme when I was at school, or at least I think I can. Our version went something like:

Here we go gathering nuts in May,

Nuts in May, nuts in May,

Here we go gathering nuts in May,

On a cold and frosty morning.

Nuts? In May? It doesn't make a great deal of sense, does it? For that matter, frosty May mornings don't make sense either.

I reckon it's one of those things that aren't supposed to make any sense. But the best of the possible explanations is that its meant to be 'nots of May' - that's the blossom of hawthorn, or May.

We have lots of May here now; the hawthorn hedge is white with blossom and fallen petals cover the ground. Up close the air is heavy with what Richard Mabey calls a "wickedly exciting, musky smell".

I'm not sure that it's wicked, but it's a sweet scent and makes me think that I should give Mabey's recipe for a May petal spirit a try. In 'Food for Free' he suggests putting petals into brandy to make a liquer

What the hedge lacks now is wrens, which makes something of a change. While the wren parents were feeding their brood in the garage the hedge was their stopping-off point.

Much of the time one of the birds was hidden in among the new leaves waiting for the a moment when the coast was clear. But over the last few days the chicks have fledged and gone.

I'd been expecting problems as we've got cats, but it all went off very smoothly. One day they were there, the next they'd gone.