Pre-easter eggs

It really feels like spring now. I’m enjoying the blue sky, burgeoning hedgerows, birds all shouting at each other, and best of all the blackbird on our kitchen window ledge, who has stoically sat on her eggs for over a fortnight, has been rewarded today with three scraggy nestlings. The fourth, beautiful, sky blue egg has yet to hatch. I don’t look too often for fear of scaring the parents off but when mum takes a rest break, I have a little peek. Sorry it’s a lousy pic – even when I pull the curtain away it still reflects off the glass and makes it hard to see details. But just look at the blue of that egg.

For about the first week the mother sat like a stone, so very still I only knew she was there because I’d already seen her. Recently she started fidgeting about on the nest and very recently she started calling softly to the chicks still in the egg – I am guessing they could hear and reply to her, as unhatched chickens can. Watching the whole process while I work at the kitchen table only a couple of feet away from her has been very moving – quite an intimate experience of a wild animal for an urbanite like me.