Missed friends

We're not even pretending any more. Winter's back. The central heating is once more back on. It was lovely to get up in the warmth once more.

I was bemused to hear that the RSPB has asked people to place mud &  water in their gardens, as the martins & swallows are having difficulty finding sufficient for building their nests. All I can say is they should continue their migration journey a bit further north. We have no shortage of either, without any intervention on our part. After days of rain we've got mud a-plenty & there's once more a lake barring access to the greenhouse.

When we lived in Arnside, we always had martins nesting outside our bedroom window. We would watch as the adults carefully attached globules of mud to the building wall, just under the gutters. Later on we would wake to the sound of the young screaming for food. You would see their tiny heads peeping out of the scoop entrance.  Then, come the early autumn, they would mass in great numbers on the telephone lines over our back yard, easily watched from our bedroom window. 

We miss them. There doesn't seem as many here. Oh yes, you see them flying over the farmland nearby, collecting on the telephone lines ready for the trip back to Africa, but none actually nest here, or even regularly visit our garden despite the clouds of midges we sometimes have.

I suppose it is partially that in Arnside we lived within sight of the Bay, and the sandbanks when the tide goes out, provide loads of mud for nests. We're a bit further away here though only by a couple of roads. I suspect, too, it's partially that this is so much more built-up an area to live in. Either way, they are missed.