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.

It’s spring!!!

Leaning against a farmyard gate during a weekend stroll, we were admiring a happy pig in his mud wallow when the farmer appeared from an outbuilding and asked if we would like to see the lambs. Thinking he would just lead us to another field where his sheep would be grazing, we diddn’t know what a treat we had in store!

He led us into the lambing pen where expectant mothers, new mums and their newborns are kept. Laying with their mothers on a thick bed of straw we saw lambs only a few hours old.

This lady had twins the previous night…

This little one was only born a couple of hours before I took the picture. Shall we take a closer look?

But most precious of all was this little one. What we diddn’t know when the farmer appeared and invited us in was that a little lamb had just been born. The mother had a difficult time, and the farmer had to help her out. He’d just stepped out of the lambing pen when he saw us and invited us in. I think he was very releived and proud and wanted to show off mother and baby. Without his help they might not have made it.

It was very moving to see this tiny scrap of life being gently nuzzled by its mother. It was six minutes old.